Life
Nabokov was born in Tsarskoe Selo, into a wealthy and aristocratic family. His father Dmitry Nabokov (1827–1904) was a Justice Minister in the reign of Alexander II from 1878 to 1885, and his mother Maria von Korff (1842–1926) was a Baroness from a prominent Baltic German family in Courland.
He studied criminal law at the University of St. Petersburg and taught criminology at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence.
V. D. Nabokov married Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova in 1897, with whom he had five children. Their eldest son was the writer and lepidopterist Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, who portrayed his father in his memoirs (Speak, Memory, 1967); V. V. Nabokov included in his novel Pale Fire a scene of misdirected assassination evoking the death of his father. Other children were Sergey (1900–1945), Kirill (1911–1964), Elena (1906–2000) and Olga (1903–1978), who was a childhood friend of novelist Ayn Rand.
Read more about this topic: Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Next to our free political institutions, our free public-school system ranks as the greatest achievement of democratic life in America ...”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Had I but died an hour before this chance
I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant
There’s nothing serious in mortality.
All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)