He hated violence, brutality and wars throughout his life: Who is Vladimir Nabokov?

Born into an aristocratic family, Vladimir Nabokov graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University, with a degree. He published his first novel, Mashenka, in 1926.

Nabokov's life story

On April 23, 1899, a boy was born in a mansion an hour away from Saint Petersburg. Vladimir Dmitriyevich Nabokov, a politician known for his liberal views, and his wife Elena Ivanova, who comes from a wealthy and noble family, named their son Vladimir Vladimovich. This rich family, steeped in aristocratic culture, will have four more children. Vladimir, the oldest of five siblings, started taking English and French lessons from private teachers at a very young age. Three languages are already spoken at the same time at home.

With the encouragement of his teachers, Vladimir started reading the poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Browning in English, and masters such as Gustave Flaubert and Jules Verne in French. Realizing that Vladimir was unfamiliar with Russian writers, his father also hired a Russian teacher for his son. After a while, he begins to read the works of Vladimir, Tolstoy, and Chekhov with the same enthusiasm.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (22 April 1899 – 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was an expatriate Russian and Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.

Educated in the best schools, Vladimir will be influenced by the rich library and private teachers in their mansion, as well as his father's work discipline and passion for butterflies, and his inner world will be deepened by his mother's spirituality and sensitivity.

This atmosphere of peace surrounding the warm home ended with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Vladimir's father, who worked in official duties for a while, could not adapt to the environment, so he took his family and moved to Yalta, in the Crimea Region. When the arms of the Red Army reached there, Vladimir went to England via Istanbul and began to study Slavic languages and literature at the famous Trinity College in Cambridge.

In 1922, Vladimir returned to his family, who were living in exile in Berlin. In the same year, in the months when Joyce completed his work, Ulysses, Vladimir's father was killed while trying to prevent two racist fascists from attacking one of his friends. When the troubled situation of his family begins to turn into a complete drama, Vladimir starts to work with the support of Russian refugees in Berlin. While the young writer-to-be writes his memories and thoughts taking shape in the folds of his brain under the pseudonym V Sirin because he is afraid of the similarity of names with his father, he also gives language lessons and coaches tennis and football in order to overcome financial difficulties.

While working on Kafka's The Trial, Vladimir married a Russian girl of Jewish origin named Vera Slonim. While Vladimir's first novel, Mashenka, which has autobiographical features, was published in 1926, Kafka was writing another work, The Castle, which would only come to light after his death. After Mashenka, King, Queen, Knave–Rua, Dam, Vale, which the young author wrote in English under the pseudonym V Sirin, was published.

John Updike says of Vladimir's third novel, published in Berlin under the pseudonym V Sirin, "For those who have not yet delved into Nabokov's unique universe, The Luzhin Defense is an excellent introduction." Laughter in the Dark, which is the first work in which he deals with the love of a middle-aged man for a very young girl, is the author's last work published in Berlin.

The Nazis came to the gates of Berlin, and Nabokov's Jewish wife, Vera, was dismissed from her job. The young writer, who does not see a bright future for his family, will risk becoming a refugee once again. He left Berlin, where he took refuge from Russia and tried to build a new life for himself, and settled in Paris in 1936 with his wife and their two-year-old son Dimitri.

During his short stay in France, Nabokov worked on his novel Despair and Invitation to a Beheading, while also designing Russian puzzles and chess games for magazines. While Sartre's work La Nausée was on the shelves of bookstores in Paris, the Nazis did not stand still and occupied France. Tired of playing tag with the devil, Nabokov emigrates with his family, this time to America, far away.

Nabokov, who finally found peace, a comfortable working environment, and security in the New World, would continue to write the most powerful works of his writing life while teaching at universities such as Wellesley, Cornell, and Harvard. The author's first work completed in America was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), which he developed in the bathroom of the hotel where they stayed in Paris.

An event that marked Nabokov's childhood, the ten-year-old girl he fell in love with when he was twelve, would be the source of inspiration for many of the works he would write in the future. As a matter of fact, The Enchanter, which he wrote in France and was published much later, deals with the passion of a middle-aged man for a young girl. This trio, which begins with Laughter in the Dark, reaches its peak with Lolita (1955). Humbert, the male hero of the novel, also has a childhood love, just like Nabokov. The author names Humbert's dead first love Annabel Leigh in his work as if referring to the young girl in the magical poem "Annabel Lee" by his beloved famous poet Edgar Allan Poe. Reading Lolita, in the words of a famous literary critic, is like "watching a tightrope walker perform 'Swan Lake' while singing 'Don Giovanni' arias."

Nabokov, who unexpectedly attracted the attention of the whole world with his novel Lolita, continued his life in the New World with Pnin (1957), which tells the story of a Russian professor living there. Although he said in his interviews, "I loved America very much, because I feel at home there," he went to Switzerland shortly after becoming an American citizen, this time with the support of the financial means he obtained from his new novels. He closed the upper floor of a luxury hotel and lived in Montreux with his wife Vera from 1961 until his death.

Vera, who is the master writer's secretary, editor, and press representative, as well as her life partner, continues to fulfill her duties in Switzerland. His work, Pale Fire – which consists of a 999-line poem, is followed by his autobiography, Speak, Memory, one of Nabokov's masterpieces (1967).

Nabokov's longest novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, which was met with different interpretations and is generally respected, was published in 1969. Next up is Transparent Things, which is a piece from his own life, which tells the Swiss memories of an American editor.

Hating violence, brutality, and wars throughout his life, he said in an interview, “I am disgusted by the barbarism of rude people. It doesn't matter whether it is black or white. This pacifist writer, who had such sharp views as to say "Red fraudsters, pink charlatans", passed away in Montreux, one of the quietest corners of Switzerland (1977).

Vladimir Vladimovich Nabokov was born in Russia and lived his early youth in Saint Petersburg. After his education in England, he took refuge first in Germany and then in France and struggled for a new life and a new identity. And finally, he died in Switzerland as a world-famous American writer.

Summary of Nabokov's life story

In 1899 He was born in St. Petersburg. He was the eldest son of a wealthy, liberal family. When the Bolsheviks came to power, the family left Russia and went first to London and then to Berlin. Nabokov completed his education at Trinity College, Cambridge. Between 1923 and 1940, he wrote novels, stories, plays, and poems in his native language and gained fame as one of the outstanding Russian émigré writers of his generation. He immigrated to the USA with his wife and son in 1940 and taught at Wellesley College from 1941 to 1948. After the worldwide success of Lolita, published in 1955, he retired from his professorship of Russian Literature at Cornell University in 1959 and settled in Switzerland. Nabokov published his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, in 1941, and after that he continued to write his works in English, using this language with surprising creativity. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.