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Nabokov's Worlds

Ask this member a question. viviandarkbloom An amateur nabokovist
3 Apr 2006
4.0 of 5 stars based on 4 votes
One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) lived through the Russian Revolution and two world wars before settling in America for almost twenty years. The circumstances of his life, as well as his wide-ranging interests in literature and nature (he was a well-regarded lepitodopterist) led him from his birthplace in turn of the century Russia across Europe and throughout the United States. This list attempts to retrace the major steps of his life.
1. St. Petersburg, Russia
St. Petersburg, North-West Russia
Nabokov was born here on April 22, 1899. When the Bolshevik forces finally prevailed in 1919, his aristocratic family fled the country, all of them narrowly averting certain death. The townhouse where the Nabokov family lived is now the Nabokov Museum, located at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Street. A pastel portrait of Nabokov's mother also hangs in the State Russian Museum.
2. Cambridge, England
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
In the fall of 1919, Nabokov began his studies in French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge University.
3. Berlin, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Upon completion of his studies at Cambridge, Nabokov lived in Berlin, where his family had settled. Sadly, just before completion of his degree, Nabokov's father, who edited a Russian émigré newspaper and had always been heavily involved in politics, was assassinated at a public debate. (His father is buried in the Tegel Cemetary in Berlin.) On a happier note, Nabokov met his future wife, Vera, in Berlin and wrote many of his best early novels in the city as well.
4. Paris, France
Paris, Ile-de-France
After many years in Berlin, Nabokov, his wife, and young son briefly lived in Paris for two years, from 1937 to 1939--when war was declared. It prompted another quick escape (compelled largely by the fact that Vera Nabokov was Jewish), not unlike his earlier one from Russia.
5. Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, Finger Lakes
For most of the time that Nabokov spent in the United States, he was based in Ithaca. He taught at Cornell University for nearly fourteen years, while writing the great novels that would establish his literary reputation: Lolita, Pale Fire, and Pnin.
6. Montreux, Switzerland
Montreux, Vaud
In 1959, Nabokov and his wife returned to Europe and made their home here, in the cosmopolitan Swiss town of Montreux, near Lake Geneva. From his arrival there in 1959 until his death in 1977, he and his wife lived as guests in the Montreux Palace Hotel! After his death, Nabokov's ashes were interred in a tomb outside Montreux, in the village of Clarens.
7. Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
From Cambridge to Cambridge: While teaching at Cornell, Nabokov's ongoing studies of butterflies led him to a research fellowship at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
8. Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Nabokov's butterfly adventures led him all around the world, from France and Italy to the Caribbean. While he lived in the United States, he and his wife Vera would head west during the summer months, always in search of new and undiscovered butterflies. It was on his first trip to the western part of the country in 1941 when he found a new species, Neonympha dorothea (named for a family friend who was driving with them) near the Grand Canyon area.
Explore locations featured in this Traveler List: St. Petersburg, Cambridge, Berlin, Paris, Ithaca, Montreux, Cambridge, Grand Canyon National Park