WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.140 Okay, let's unpack this. We are about to embark 00:00:02.140 --> 00:00:05.990 on what you could call the ultimate study in 00:00:05.990 --> 00:00:08.910 human duality. Definitely. A figure so complex, 00:00:09.009 --> 00:00:11.189 so multifaceted, that just trying to understand 00:00:11.189 --> 00:00:13.589 him means you have to cross linguistic borders, 00:00:13.849 --> 00:00:16.929 literary genres. And even scientific disciplines. 00:00:17.190 --> 00:00:20.510 We are diving deep into the life and mind of 00:00:20.510 --> 00:00:23.289 Vladimir Nabokov. A name that's, you know, synonymous 00:00:23.289 --> 00:00:26.609 with these controversial, dazzling, almost architecturally 00:00:26.609 --> 00:00:29.530 perfect novels. But who is also, and this is 00:00:29.530 --> 00:00:32.490 the incredible part, simultaneously an inner... 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:34.810 internationally recognized scientist and a meticulous 00:00:34.810 --> 00:00:38.149 composer of all things complex chess problems. 00:00:38.450 --> 00:00:40.469 It's a spectacular convergence of intellect, 00:00:40.609 --> 00:00:43.270 and our sources today, they track a journey that's 00:00:43.270 --> 00:00:45.969 just defined by devastating upheaval, relentless 00:00:45.969 --> 00:00:48.789 exile, and at the end of the day, this incredible 00:00:48.789 --> 00:00:50.969 artistic triumph. So we're tracing that life, 00:00:51.090 --> 00:00:53.530 a life that moved from the, well, the gilded 00:00:53.530 --> 00:00:56.009 aristocratic world of imperial Russia. To the 00:00:56.009 --> 00:00:58.829 austere, precise academic halls of America, and 00:00:58.829 --> 00:01:01.109 then finally to that long, self -imposed Swiss 00:01:01.109 --> 00:01:04.890 exile. And the mission for you is to uncover 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:07.709 the specific, often traumatic elements of this 00:01:07.709 --> 00:01:10.569 journey. The things that took a trilingual Russian 00:01:10.569 --> 00:01:13.670 noble and forged him into one of the 20th century's 00:01:13.670 --> 00:01:16.250 most essential. And I would argue most rigorous 00:01:16.250 --> 00:01:18.870 American authors. And the roots of this sophistication 00:01:18.870 --> 00:01:22.430 are, I mean, they're incredibly deep and privileged. 00:01:22.890 --> 00:01:25.769 Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. Right. 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:28.140 into the kind of wealth and cultural prominence 00:01:28.140 --> 00:01:30.180 that you know just completely vanished after 00:01:30.180 --> 00:01:33.439 the revolution his family was nobility his lineage 00:01:33.439 --> 00:01:36.359 even traced back to a 14th century tatar prince 00:01:36.359 --> 00:01:39.780 debak mursa But it wasn't just old wealth, was 00:01:39.780 --> 00:01:43.359 it? No, not at all. His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich 00:01:43.359 --> 00:01:47.260 Nabokov, was a highly active, really dedicated 00:01:47.260 --> 00:01:49.819 liberal lawyer and statesman. So this wasn't 00:01:49.819 --> 00:01:52.200 just an affluent background. No, it was an environment 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:55.299 of intense, enlightened liberalism. His father 00:01:55.299 --> 00:01:57.700 was a leading figure in the Constitutional Democratic 00:01:57.700 --> 00:02:00.420 Party. He wrote extensively on criminal law. 00:02:00.599 --> 00:02:03.079 He really embodied the intellectual freedom that 00:02:03.079 --> 00:02:06.379 became, I think, Nabokov's core value. And that 00:02:06.379 --> 00:02:10.699 environment. established his, well, truly cosmopolitan 00:02:10.699 --> 00:02:12.620 childhood. They made sure he was trilingual. 00:02:12.879 --> 00:02:16.159 Russian, English, and French from a very, very 00:02:16.159 --> 00:02:18.259 early age. And here is the linguistic twist, 00:02:18.259 --> 00:02:22.340 though. And frankly, it is astonishing for a 00:02:22.340 --> 00:02:24.500 writer we often just categorize as Russian -American. 00:02:25.340 --> 00:02:27.680 Nabokov himself recalled that he could read and 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:30.520 write in English, not just speak it, before he 00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:33.370 could do so in Russian. Wow. Before Russian. 00:02:33.490 --> 00:02:36.030 His first experience of intense literary absorption 00:02:36.030 --> 00:02:38.129 was listening to his mother read him an English 00:02:38.129 --> 00:02:40.949 book, Misunderstood. So that early connection 00:02:40.949 --> 00:02:43.490 to English, this sort of secondary adopted tongue, 00:02:43.550 --> 00:02:46.409 it actually became his primary language of literacy. 00:02:46.830 --> 00:02:48.990 That is the key. i think it unlocks the whole 00:02:48.990 --> 00:02:51.969 mystery of his later success as an english language 00:02:51.969 --> 00:02:54.610 stylist it absolutely sets the stage it explains 00:02:54.610 --> 00:02:57.270 his later status as an exophonic writer someone 00:02:57.270 --> 00:03:00.250 who chooses to write so successfully in a language 00:03:00.250 --> 00:03:02.469 that isn't their native one he always described 00:03:02.469 --> 00:03:05.430 his childhood as perfect and cosmopolitan yeah 00:03:05.430 --> 00:03:07.889 a world just brimming with these vivid sensory 00:03:07.889 --> 00:03:10.909 details the light on the estate the sound of 00:03:10.909 --> 00:03:13.590 the languages things he would later spend decades 00:03:13.590 --> 00:03:17.509 mining in his great memoir speak That almost 00:03:17.509 --> 00:03:20.449 painful ability to recall the past with such 00:03:20.449 --> 00:03:24.330 microscopic, crystalline detail. That became 00:03:24.330 --> 00:03:27.110 the entire foundation of his literary output, 00:03:27.310 --> 00:03:29.889 especially because, as we know, that world was 00:03:29.889 --> 00:03:32.229 about to be violently shattered. And that shattering 00:03:32.229 --> 00:03:35.550 moment, it was imminent. It arrived definitively 00:03:35.550 --> 00:03:38.030 with the October Revolution in 1917, but just 00:03:38.030 --> 00:03:41.090 before that, in 1916. Right. At the tender age 00:03:41.090 --> 00:03:44.900 of 16, Nabokov inherited a major estate. Raj 00:03:44.900 --> 00:03:48.139 Desphino from his maternal uncle, Vasily Ivanovich 00:03:48.139 --> 00:03:50.800 Rukavishnikov, who he called Uncle Ruka in his 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:52.639 right. Exactly. And the timing of that inheritance 00:03:52.639 --> 00:03:55.460 is just it's. Cruelly ironic. He owned the Raj 00:03:55.460 --> 00:03:58.860 Desvino estate for precisely one year. One year. 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:01.240 Before the Bolshevik Revolution seized it and 00:04:01.240 --> 00:04:03.419 redistributed the land. It's the defining symbol 00:04:03.419 --> 00:04:05.379 of his life, isn't it? The only house he ever 00:04:05.379 --> 00:04:07.259 formally owned was lost before he was even an 00:04:07.259 --> 00:04:09.599 adult. That loss of property, that violent break 00:04:09.599 --> 00:04:11.740 from the physical landscape of his memory. It 00:04:11.740 --> 00:04:14.400 became the central motivating theme of exile 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:17.600 that propelled his entire existence. So your 00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:20.019 family initially fled St. Petersburg. They thought 00:04:20.019 --> 00:04:22.180 the chaos would be short -lived. Yeah. So they 00:04:22.180 --> 00:04:25.060 relocated. Crimea. But when the anti -Bolshevik 00:04:25.060 --> 00:04:28.199 white army was decisively defeated in early 1919, 00:04:28.519 --> 00:04:31.240 that illusion was just shattered. And they were 00:04:31.240 --> 00:04:34.180 forced into a permanent, heartbreaking exile 00:04:34.180 --> 00:04:37.079 in Western Europe. It was the definitive, non 00:04:37.079 --> 00:04:39.939 -negotiable break from his ancestral culture, 00:04:40.279 --> 00:04:43.319 his language, his entire social status. His formal 00:04:43.319 --> 00:04:45.939 education continued in England, though. He gained 00:04:45.939 --> 00:04:48.620 admittance to Trinity College, Cambridge. And 00:04:48.620 --> 00:04:50.879 it's interesting that he initially studied zoology. 00:04:50.980 --> 00:04:53.089 Right. Again, it points to that deep... seated 00:04:53.089 --> 00:04:55.449 scientific interest. Only later did he pivot 00:04:55.449 --> 00:04:58.170 to Slavic and Romance languages, getting his 00:04:58.170 --> 00:05:01.389 BA in 1922. So you can see the literary and the 00:05:01.389 --> 00:05:04.029 scientific locations just existing side by side 00:05:04.029 --> 00:05:06.810 even back then. Exactly. And this time in Cambridge, 00:05:07.009 --> 00:05:09.410 it proved crucial for defining his artistic path. 00:05:09.689 --> 00:05:12.370 One biographical source notes that it was specifically 00:05:12.370 --> 00:05:14.310 during his time alone with English and Irish 00:05:14.310 --> 00:05:17.600 classics like Ulysses, King Lear. That he made 00:05:17.600 --> 00:05:19.879 the firm decision to become a Russian writer. 00:05:20.060 --> 00:05:22.680 It wasn't about the emigre community. It was 00:05:22.680 --> 00:05:25.399 the solitude and the weight of established literature 00:05:25.399 --> 00:05:27.839 that convinced him. So the Western intellectual 00:05:27.839 --> 00:05:31.120 environment confirmed his artistic calling. But 00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:34.019 his literary identity was forged in a far more 00:05:34.019 --> 00:05:36.540 painful place shortly after. In the Russian emigre 00:05:36.540 --> 00:05:39.259 center of Berlin, Nabokov moved there in 1920. 00:05:39.899 --> 00:05:42.420 And his father quickly established Rule, which 00:05:42.420 --> 00:05:44.800 was the major Russian emigre newspaper. And this 00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:46.800 is where one of the foundational traumas of his 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:50.040 life occurred. In March 1922, during a political 00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:52.540 meeting, two Russian monarchists attacked the 00:05:52.540 --> 00:05:55.379 liberal politician Pavel Milyukov. And what happened 00:05:55.379 --> 00:05:58.879 next was just the ultimate act of paternal sacrifice. 00:05:59.449 --> 00:06:02.430 Vladimir Dmitrovich Nabokov, his father, stepped 00:06:02.430 --> 00:06:04.649 in to shield the political target, Milyukov, 00:06:04.769 --> 00:06:07.069 from the gunfire. And he was shot and killed 00:06:07.069 --> 00:06:09.730 instantly. The sheer, violent, unceremonious 00:06:09.730 --> 00:06:11.689 suddenness of that assassination, it's something 00:06:11.689 --> 00:06:13.970 that Bokov spent his entire literary career trying 00:06:13.970 --> 00:06:15.949 to process. To integrate into his work, yeah. 00:06:16.410 --> 00:06:18.569 It wasn't just a political murder. It was this 00:06:18.569 --> 00:06:22.329 deeply personal, senseless tragedy that ripped 00:06:22.329 --> 00:06:24.810 the family apart. And it became a haunting motif 00:06:24.810 --> 00:06:26.949 in his fiction. Oh, absolutely. When you read 00:06:26.949 --> 00:06:28.970 Pale Fire, for example, there's a strong interpretation 00:06:28.970 --> 00:06:32.670 that the assassin, he's supposed to be this lunatic 00:06:32.670 --> 00:06:35.389 who meant to kill a fugitive European monarch. 00:06:35.730 --> 00:06:38.009 But he kills the innocent American poet John 00:06:38.009 --> 00:06:40.870 Shade instead. Exactly. The fictional parallel 00:06:40.870 --> 00:06:43.189 of political violence claiming the life of an 00:06:43.189 --> 00:06:46.740 innocent, non -political, artistic figure. It's 00:06:46.740 --> 00:06:49.980 a direct echo of his father's murder. And that 00:06:49.980 --> 00:06:53.100 tragedy cast a very long shadow. His mother and 00:06:53.100 --> 00:06:55.839 sister eventually moved to Prague, but Nabokov 00:06:55.839 --> 00:06:59.819 stayed in Berlin for 15 years. intense, productive, 00:06:59.939 --> 00:07:02.439 but really difficult years. He became recognized 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:04.680 in that self -sufficient, almost hermetically 00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:07.199 sealed Russian emigre community. He published 00:07:07.199 --> 00:07:09.699 his first nine novels in Russian under the pseudonym 00:07:09.699 --> 00:07:12.480 V. Sirin. Right, Sirin, that mythological, often 00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:15.019 melancholy bird of Russian folklore. So why the 00:07:15.019 --> 00:07:17.420 pseudonym? Was it just artistic branding? Well, 00:07:17.439 --> 00:07:20.180 not just. He sometimes used it specifically to 00:07:20.180 --> 00:07:22.959 mask his identity from certain critics. He wanted 00:07:22.959 --> 00:07:25.259 to be assessed on his writing alone, separate 00:07:25.259 --> 00:07:27.079 from his family's political legacy. And that 00:07:27.079 --> 00:07:29.000 writing was not... bringing him luxury. I mean, 00:07:29.019 --> 00:07:31.060 our sources confirm he was just scraping by. 00:07:31.259 --> 00:07:34.439 This highly educated trilingual aristocrat was 00:07:34.439 --> 00:07:37.319 forced to teach languages. He even gave tennis 00:07:37.319 --> 00:07:39.680 and boxing lessons just to supplement his scant 00:07:39.680 --> 00:07:42.139 writing income. It wasn't the romantic life of 00:07:42.139 --> 00:07:44.220 the starving artist. This was the grim necessity 00:07:44.220 --> 00:07:47.160 of survival after just utter financial ruin. 00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:49.459 It really speaks to the disintegration of his 00:07:49.459 --> 00:07:53.779 earlier privileged life. And he intensely disliked 00:07:53.779 --> 00:07:56.329 Berlin. He described himself as remaining socially 00:07:56.329 --> 00:07:59.290 insulated, knowing very few actual Germans. Living 00:07:59.290 --> 00:08:01.810 entirely within that tight, often suffocating 00:08:01.810 --> 00:08:04.250 Russian community. But the impetus for his next 00:08:04.250 --> 00:08:07.310 vital move fleeing to France, that was tied to 00:08:07.310 --> 00:08:10.100 his relationship with Vera. Vera Evzevna Slonim. 00:08:10.139 --> 00:08:12.939 He married her in 1925 and she was Russian Jewish. 00:08:13.220 --> 00:08:16.420 So by the mid 1930s, the escalating, palpable 00:08:16.420 --> 00:08:19.160 anti -Semitism in Germany became a direct, immediate 00:08:19.160 --> 00:08:21.839 threat to their family. Vera actually lost her 00:08:21.839 --> 00:08:25.060 job in 1936 because of the increasingly hostile 00:08:25.060 --> 00:08:27.959 environment created by the Nazi regime. And this 00:08:27.959 --> 00:08:30.699 external pressure was combined with an insidious 00:08:30.699 --> 00:08:34.179 internal threat. Get this. Sergei Tabaritsky, 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:37.000 one of the men involved in his father's assassination 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:40.539 back in 22. No. He had been appointed deputy 00:08:40.539 --> 00:08:43.399 head of Germany's Russian Emigre Bureau around 00:08:43.399 --> 00:08:45.740 that same time. You have to be kidding me. That's 00:08:45.740 --> 00:08:48.120 a chilling convergence of threats. Absolutely. 00:08:48.279 --> 00:08:50.899 The man involved in the murder of his father 00:08:50.899 --> 00:08:53.700 was now a local official in the regime that was 00:08:53.700 --> 00:08:56.889 persecuting his wife. It spurred Nabokov. to 00:08:56.889 --> 00:08:59.470 urgently seek work in the English -speaking world. 00:08:59.649 --> 00:09:03.490 So they managed to move to France in 1937. And 00:09:03.490 --> 00:09:05.750 the fear was absolutely justified. He was tragically 00:09:05.750 --> 00:09:07.470 confirmed later by the fate of his own brother. 00:09:07.549 --> 00:09:09.370 Yeah, his brother, Sergei. He was one of the 00:09:09.370 --> 00:09:12.220 many who didn't flee. Sergei was openly gay and 00:09:12.220 --> 00:09:14.220 had publicly denounced Hitler's regime. And he 00:09:14.220 --> 00:09:16.580 was eventually arrested. He died in the Nungum 00:09:16.580 --> 00:09:19.580 concentration camp in 1945. That is the true 00:09:19.580 --> 00:09:22.820 dark context, the political persecution and the 00:09:22.820 --> 00:09:25.220 personal loss that surrounds Nabokov's final 00:09:25.220 --> 00:09:28.080 desperate flight from Europe. And that final 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:31.000 shift, both linguistically and culturally, it 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:34.200 was formalized in Paris. Nabokov wrote his final 00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:37.259 Russian novella there, The Enchanter, in 1939. 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:40.750 A short work, only about 55 pages long. But it 00:09:40.750 --> 00:09:43.590 was later identified by Nabokov himself as the 00:09:43.590 --> 00:09:46.830 first little throb of Lolita. The clear, dark 00:09:46.830 --> 00:09:49.870 bridge between his Russian literary past and 00:09:49.870 --> 00:09:51.769 the English language career that was about to 00:09:51.769 --> 00:09:53.610 launch in America. And the clock was ticking. 00:09:53.850 --> 00:09:57.009 It was. As German troops advanced rapidly through 00:09:57.009 --> 00:10:00.629 France, the family fled Europe in May 1940. They 00:10:00.629 --> 00:10:03.429 sailed on the SS Champlain and ultimately settled 00:10:03.429 --> 00:10:05.840 in Manhattan. So the world had forced him out 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:07.879 of his native language and culture. Yet that 00:10:07.879 --> 00:10:10.480 very exile, which began in violence and fear, 00:10:10.700 --> 00:10:13.519 was precisely what cleared the way for his greatest 00:10:13.519 --> 00:10:15.820 artistic opportunities as an American writer. 00:10:16.059 --> 00:10:18.240 The American years begin with a remarkable new 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:21.320 phase. Nabokov officially became a U .S. citizen 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:24.840 in 1945, cementing that final linguistic and 00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:27.220 cultural relocation. In his early American years, 00:10:27.340 --> 00:10:29.559 they just perfectly embody the intellectual double 00:10:29.559 --> 00:10:31.679 life that you mentioned. Rigorous writing coupled 00:10:31.679 --> 00:10:34.029 with equally rigorous science. When he first 00:10:34.029 --> 00:10:36.610 landed in Manhattan, he wasn't yet employed as 00:10:36.610 --> 00:10:41.389 a professor. Instead, in 1940 and 41, he secured 00:10:41.389 --> 00:10:43.929 volunteer work as an entomologist at the American 00:10:43.929 --> 00:10:46.009 Museum of Natural History. In New York City. 00:10:46.570 --> 00:10:48.789 And this wasn't just some quaint hobby. This 00:10:48.789 --> 00:10:51.750 was a deeply serious scientific engagement. It 00:10:51.750 --> 00:10:54.269 gave him legitimacy and, you know, the necessary 00:10:54.269 --> 00:10:56.370 time for his writing while he searched for academic 00:10:56.370 --> 00:10:58.929 postings. He eventually moved into the academic 00:10:58.929 --> 00:11:01.090 sphere, starting at Wellesley College in 1941. 00:11:01.649 --> 00:11:04.629 He was brought in as a resident lecturer in comparative 00:11:04.629 --> 00:11:07.429 literature. A position created specifically for 00:11:07.429 --> 00:11:09.870 him to house his incredible polyglot abilities. 00:11:10.309 --> 00:11:12.429 It's often forgotten that he's remembered as 00:11:12.429 --> 00:11:14.250 the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. 00:11:14.759 --> 00:11:17.659 But what is truly remarkable is the sheer geographical 00:11:17.659 --> 00:11:20.700 and intellectual juggling act he performed. What 00:11:20.700 --> 00:11:22.700 do you mean? While teaching literature at Wellesley 00:11:22.700 --> 00:11:26.399 from 1941 to 48, he simultaneously served as 00:11:26.399 --> 00:11:29.100 the de facto curator of Lepidoptery, the study 00:11:29.100 --> 00:11:31.799 of butterflies, at Harvard University's Museum 00:11:31.799 --> 00:11:33.899 of Comparative Zoology. Wait, at the same time? 00:11:34.019 --> 00:11:36.690 At the same time. You have a man maintaining 00:11:36.690 --> 00:11:39.909 two distinct demanding careers in two distinct 00:11:39.909 --> 00:11:42.409 fields at two prestigious nearby institutions 00:11:42.409 --> 00:11:45.649 all at once. That suggests a mind that just refused 00:11:45.649 --> 00:11:48.070 to be singular. That dual devotion continued 00:11:48.070 --> 00:11:50.929 when he transitioned to Cornell University, teaching 00:11:50.929 --> 00:11:53.809 Russian and European literature from 1948 to 00:11:53.809 --> 00:11:57.289 59. And this is where his reputation as a unique 00:11:57.289 --> 00:12:01.919 and often. deeply controversial professor truly 00:12:01.919 --> 00:12:04.440 became cemented. His teaching philosophy was 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:07.019 almost aggressively counterintuitive to the established 00:12:07.019 --> 00:12:09.860 humanities curriculum of the time. He fundamentally 00:12:09.860 --> 00:12:12.379 challenged the whole notion that literature should 00:12:12.379 --> 00:12:15.480 be instructional or moralizing or, you know, 00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:17.980 emotionally therapeutic. He insisted that novels 00:12:17.980 --> 00:12:20.759 should not aim to teach moral lessons or that 00:12:20.759 --> 00:12:22.940 readers should simply empathize with the characters 00:12:22.940 --> 00:12:24.759 they read about. Which is what everyone else 00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:27.399 was teaching. Exactly. Instead, he championed 00:12:27.399 --> 00:12:29.399 aesthetic enjoyment. that higher -order pleasure 00:12:29.399 --> 00:12:32.519 you get only by paying intense, almost scientific 00:12:32.519 --> 00:12:35.480 attention to style, structure, and factual details. 00:12:35.700 --> 00:12:38.759 And you mean extreme precision? Extreme. When 00:12:38.759 --> 00:12:41.600 teaching James Joyce's Ulysses, he would completely 00:12:41.600 --> 00:12:44.179 reject discussions about complex Irish history, 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:46.879 which many critics view as essential to the novel. 00:12:47.059 --> 00:12:50.179 So what did he do instead? Instead, he demanded 00:12:50.179 --> 00:12:52.919 that students use a detailed map to meticulously 00:12:52.919 --> 00:12:55.059 track the characters' movements through Dublin. 00:12:55.500 --> 00:12:58.340 He was focused purely on the physical, structural 00:12:58.340 --> 00:13:01.340 reality of the text. He famously detested general 00:13:01.340 --> 00:13:04.659 ideas, grand narratives, anything that smacked 00:13:04.659 --> 00:13:07.940 of abstract intellectual laziness. And this intense 00:13:07.940 --> 00:13:10.980 focus on the tangible? On the structural framework 00:13:10.980 --> 00:13:13.580 of the novel, it resulted in a very particular, 00:13:13.779 --> 00:13:16.059 very strict pedagogical style. Right. He was 00:13:16.059 --> 00:13:18.860 known for being immensely tough on grading. One 00:13:18.860 --> 00:13:20.740 of his students recalled that Nebukov intentionally 00:13:20.740 --> 00:13:23.419 kept a distance. He would often call students 00:13:23.419 --> 00:13:25.799 not by their names, but by their seat numbers. 00:13:26.039 --> 00:13:28.379 Wow. It reinforced the idea that they were there 00:13:28.379 --> 00:13:30.240 to serve the text, not the other way around. 00:13:30.539 --> 00:13:33.799 Yet that detached precision. it profoundly influenced 00:13:33.799 --> 00:13:36.820 a generation of thinkers and writers. We have 00:13:36.820 --> 00:13:39.440 to note the incredibly high -profile future figures 00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:41.559 who sat in his lecture halls. Who are we talking 00:13:41.559 --> 00:13:44.480 about? Well, for one, future U .S. Supreme Court 00:13:44.480 --> 00:13:47.539 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She later explicitly 00:13:47.539 --> 00:13:51.460 cited Nabokov as a major formative influence 00:13:51.460 --> 00:13:54.200 on her ability to write clearly and analytically. 00:13:54.340 --> 00:13:56.259 That makes so much sense. And of course, the 00:13:56.259 --> 00:13:58.740 young novelist Thomas Pynchon also attended his 00:13:58.740 --> 00:14:01.919 lectures. Pynchon's famously dense and structurally 00:14:01.919 --> 00:14:05.179 complex debut novel V is often noted by critics 00:14:05.179 --> 00:14:07.600 for echoing the stylistic and structural tricks 00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:10.320 found in Nabokov's earlier English novels. So 00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:12.820 it makes you wonder how that mandate to reject 00:14:12.820 --> 00:14:15.559 generalization and focus on structure influenced 00:14:15.559 --> 00:14:18.379 both a jurist dedicated to legal detail and a 00:14:18.379 --> 00:14:20.269 novelist dedicated to poetry. modern complexity 00:14:20.269 --> 00:14:22.970 the cornell years particularly the summer breaks 00:14:22.970 --> 00:14:25.490 were also the period when the core of his most 00:14:25.490 --> 00:14:28.169 famous novel was created lolita nabokov wrote 00:14:28.169 --> 00:14:30.850 large chunks of lolita while traveling on his 00:14:30.850 --> 00:14:32.789 annual butterfly collecting trips throughout 00:14:32.789 --> 00:14:35.529 the western u .s every summer So there's an incredible 00:14:35.529 --> 00:14:38.230 irony there. This most controversial work of 00:14:38.230 --> 00:14:40.590 forbidden desire was composed amidst the most 00:14:40.590 --> 00:14:43.049 innocent and precise of scientific pursuits, 00:14:43.110 --> 00:14:45.710 often in the quiet isolation of motel rooms. 00:14:45.929 --> 00:14:48.409 And this brings us to the absolutely indispensable 00:14:48.409 --> 00:14:52.029 role of Vera. Given that Nabokov never learned 00:14:52.029 --> 00:14:55.139 to drive, he relied entirely on her. To transport 00:14:55.139 --> 00:14:57.700 him, their scientific equipment, and his writing 00:14:57.700 --> 00:15:00.720 notes across thousands of miles. The sources 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:03.039 paint a portrait of a total seamless partnership 00:15:03.039 --> 00:15:06.720 that goes far beyond the traditional spouse role. 00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:09.600 Oh, way beyond. One source gives a perfect summary 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:12.799 of her function. It details how Vera served as 00:15:12.799 --> 00:15:16.759 secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator, 00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:19.980 and bibliographer. His agent, business manager, 00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:22.820 legal counsel, and chauffeur. His research assistant. 00:15:23.259 --> 00:15:25.820 teaching assistant, and professorial understudy. 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:28.320 She was effectively his entire organizational 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:30.559 structure. And she was more than just his support 00:15:30.559 --> 00:15:33.519 system. She was the literal physical gatekeeper 00:15:33.519 --> 00:15:35.360 of his art. What do you mean by that? We have 00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:37.700 this extraordinary crucial account that when 00:15:37.700 --> 00:15:40.159 Nabokov, overwhelmed by the controversial subject 00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:42.620 matter and frustrated with the draft of Lolita, 00:15:42.700 --> 00:15:45.039 he attempted to burn the unfinished pages in 00:15:45.039 --> 00:15:47.379 the backyard incinerator and Vera physically 00:15:47.379 --> 00:15:49.620 stopped him. She saved it from the fire. She 00:15:49.620 --> 00:15:52.539 saved it. Imagine that moment. The frustration, 00:15:52.899 --> 00:15:55.679 the overwhelming desire to destroy a work that 00:15:55.679 --> 00:15:59.779 felt too dark or too difficult. And Vera, the 00:15:59.779 --> 00:16:02.500 quiet anchor, physically interceding to save 00:16:02.500 --> 00:16:04.559 the manuscript. That's not just editing. That 00:16:04.559 --> 00:16:06.960 is the physical preservation of a masterpiece. 00:16:07.340 --> 00:16:09.620 A masterpiece that would ultimately secure their 00:16:09.620 --> 00:16:12.340 financial freedom and global artistic recognition. 00:16:12.820 --> 00:16:15.379 He described her as the best humored woman he 00:16:15.379 --> 00:16:18.080 had ever known. And frankly, she had to be. And 00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:20.240 the risk paid off. Lolita was finally published 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:23.799 in 1955. It achieved both international acclaim 00:16:23.799 --> 00:16:27.039 and instant notoriety. Sparking censorship battles 00:16:27.039 --> 00:16:29.679 and moral panic across the globe. But despite 00:16:29.679 --> 00:16:32.700 the controversy, by 1998, it ranked fourth on 00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:35.440 the modern library's list of the 100 best 20th 00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.080 century novels. It's placed firmly among the 00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:40.179 great works of the era. And this American period 00:16:40.179 --> 00:16:42.679 also produced other major works like Pliny in 00:16:42.679 --> 00:16:45.799 1957 and the fiendishly complex Pale Fire in 00:16:45.799 --> 00:16:48.299 1962. So now we have to move from the biography 00:16:48.299 --> 00:16:51.340 to the craft itself. Right. Nabokov is celebrated 00:16:51.340 --> 00:16:53.480 not just for what he managed to write, but how 00:16:53.480 --> 00:16:55.899 he wrote it. He's universally considered one 00:16:55.899 --> 00:16:58.159 of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century. 00:16:58.299 --> 00:17:00.720 I think Time magazine put it best. They noted 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:03.679 that he evolved a vivid English style, which 00:17:03.679 --> 00:17:06.839 combines Joytian wordplay with a Proustian evocation 00:17:06.839 --> 00:17:09.900 of mood and setting. That comparison is highly 00:17:09.900 --> 00:17:12.299 instructive. The joytion element, that's his 00:17:12.299 --> 00:17:15.460 masterful pun -laden linguistic gymnastics. The 00:17:15.460 --> 00:17:18.319 way he twists language, creates new words, uses 00:17:18.319 --> 00:17:20.539 sound and rhythm. And the Proustian element, 00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:23.380 that's his profound ability to evoke memory and 00:17:23.380 --> 00:17:26.819 atmosphere with microscopic sensory detail, often 00:17:26.819 --> 00:17:29.319 tied back to his lost Russian childhood. So this 00:17:29.319 --> 00:17:31.880 blend is the paradox of the trilingual master 00:17:31.880 --> 00:17:34.299 working in an adopted tongue. And this shift 00:17:34.299 --> 00:17:36.359 wasn't easy for him, even with his early English 00:17:36.359 --> 00:17:39.849 education. he confessed his anxieties to his 00:17:39.849 --> 00:17:42.369 literary friend, the critic Edmund Wilson. What 00:17:42.369 --> 00:17:45.369 did he say? He wrote, I'm too old to change Conradically, 00:17:45.569 --> 00:17:48.509 referencing Jays of Conrad, another great novelist 00:17:48.509 --> 00:17:50.910 who adopted English late. But within a few decades, 00:17:51.250 --> 00:17:53.789 the Bokov was asserting that he handled the other 00:17:53.789 --> 00:17:57.160 kind of English better than Conrad. He said that 00:17:57.160 --> 00:18:00.119 despite his occasional solacisms or grammatical 00:18:00.119 --> 00:18:03.339 errors, he could scale his verbal peaks. That 00:18:03.339 --> 00:18:05.779 is the confidence of a writer who knows he has 00:18:05.779 --> 00:18:08.339 transcended language itself. And that confidence 00:18:08.339 --> 00:18:11.819 was earned through an almost inhumanly methodical 00:18:11.819 --> 00:18:14.980 approach. We have to revisit his famous creative 00:18:14.980 --> 00:18:18.460 process. The index cards. The index cards. Nabokov 00:18:18.460 --> 00:18:20.660 famously wrote sections of text, sometimes even 00:18:20.660 --> 00:18:23.119 whole paragraphs, on hundreds of separate index 00:18:23.119 --> 00:18:25.640 cards. And this detail, which sounds like just 00:18:25.640 --> 00:18:27.839 a writer's quirk, is the ultimate link between 00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:31.000 his scientific and literary minds. Also. He would 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:33.299 expand these isolated units, these index cards, 00:18:33.500 --> 00:18:36.079 into paragraphs and chapters and then rearrange 00:18:36.079 --> 00:18:38.559 them to form the final intricately structured 00:18:38.559 --> 00:18:41.140 narratives of his novels. It's a modular approach. 00:18:41.579 --> 00:18:44.119 Exactly. It's not just a writing trick. It's 00:18:44.119 --> 00:18:47.200 a profound reflection of his systematic taxonomic 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:50.500 mind. In science, taxonomy requires the isolation, 00:18:50.859 --> 00:18:53.319 dissection, and methodical reassembly of minute 00:18:53.319 --> 00:18:56.420 data points, a butterfly wing, a piece of genitalia, 00:18:56.420 --> 00:18:59.640 a spot pattern, to create a larger cohesive classification. 00:19:00.180 --> 00:19:02.119 And in his fiction, he was doing the exact same 00:19:02.119 --> 00:19:05.599 thing. isolating words, sentences, and thematic 00:19:05.599 --> 00:19:08.380 modules, and then reassembling them into a complex, 00:19:08.579 --> 00:19:11.200 perfectly structured narrative. This desire for 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:14.019 absolute control, it also extended to his self 00:19:14.019 --> 00:19:16.700 -translation work. He translated many of his 00:19:16.700 --> 00:19:19.160 own early Russian works into English, often with 00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:21.599 his son Dmitry. But he also undertook the monumental 00:19:21.599 --> 00:19:24.400 task of translating two major English works back 00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:27.539 into Russian. His memoir, Speak, Memory, and 00:19:27.539 --> 00:19:30.220 of course, Lolita. The rationale for translating 00:19:30.220 --> 00:19:32.720 Lolita himself speaks volumes about his artistic 00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:35.380 priorities. He explicitly said he feared that 00:19:35.380 --> 00:19:37.339 future translators would produce a Russian version 00:19:37.339 --> 00:19:39.519 that would be completely butchered. By vulgar 00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:42.420 paraphrases or literary blunders in the hands 00:19:42.420 --> 00:19:44.900 of a harmful drudge. He undertook that monumental 00:19:44.900 --> 00:19:48.099 task himself simply to prevent hideous mistranslation 00:19:48.099 --> 00:19:51.079 and protect the integrity of his intricate verbal 00:19:51.079 --> 00:19:54.019 architecture in every language it existed in. 00:19:54.079 --> 00:19:57.440 And that structural intricacy, it manifests itself 00:19:57.440 --> 00:19:59.809 through his incredible literary play and devices. 00:20:00.470 --> 00:20:03.049 Nabokov expected the reader to pay attention. 00:20:03.230 --> 00:20:05.849 And he rewarded that attention with layers of 00:20:05.849 --> 00:20:08.569 hidden meaning and structural puzzles. You see 00:20:08.569 --> 00:20:11.390 this most clearly in his use of anagrams. They 00:20:11.390 --> 00:20:13.849 function almost as playful signatures or self 00:20:13.849 --> 00:20:16.390 -referential cameos. Like the character Vivian 00:20:16.390 --> 00:20:19.130 Darkbloom, who appears in both Lolita and Ada. 00:20:19.289 --> 00:20:21.890 Which is a deliberate anagram of Vladimir Nabokov. 00:20:22.920 --> 00:20:25.279 He is inserting himself into the very fabric 00:20:25.279 --> 00:20:27.619 of his fiction, inviting you to participate in 00:20:27.619 --> 00:20:29.579 the intellectual puzzle he's created. And the 00:20:29.579 --> 00:20:31.940 level of hidden complexity can be astounding. 00:20:31.940 --> 00:20:34.720 It moves beyond simple names into the structural 00:20:34.720 --> 00:20:37.380 bedrock of the story. Take his short story, The 00:20:37.380 --> 00:20:40.700 Vain Sisters. It's famous among literary critics 00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:43.900 precisely because its final paragraph is an acrostic. 00:20:44.099 --> 00:20:46.559 Meaning the first letter of each word, read in 00:20:46.559 --> 00:20:48.900 sequence, spells out a specific message from 00:20:48.900 --> 00:20:51.319 beyond the grave. That is literary engineering 00:20:51.319 --> 00:20:53.599 of the highest order. It's not just storytelling. 00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:56.579 It's an intellectual game played at the molecular 00:20:56.579 --> 00:20:59.779 level of the prose. And this obsession with coded 00:20:59.779 --> 00:21:02.140 messages is actually a theme within his fiction. 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:05.140 The short story Signs and Symbols features a 00:21:05.140 --> 00:21:07.559 chilling concept. The fictional illness called 00:21:07.559 --> 00:21:10.279 referential mania. Right, where the afflicted 00:21:10.279 --> 00:21:12.940 person perceives the entire world as being completely 00:21:12.940 --> 00:21:16.039 suffused with coded messages specifically intended 00:21:16.039 --> 00:21:18.200 for them. What's fascinating about referential 00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:21.599 mania is its meta - commentary. Given Nabokov's 00:21:21.599 --> 00:21:24.079 own penchant for planting codes and hidden patterns 00:21:24.079 --> 00:21:26.920 everywhere. From anagrams to acrostics. He is, 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:29.539 in a way, suggesting that the experience of reading 00:21:29.539 --> 00:21:31.680 a Nabokov novel can be like suffering from a 00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:34.599 mild version of this mania. He encourages you 00:21:34.599 --> 00:21:37.460 to seek the code, to analyze the structure, and 00:21:37.460 --> 00:21:39.849 to distrust the surface narrative. Beyond the 00:21:39.849 --> 00:21:41.910 devices, we have to talk about his rejection 00:21:41.910 --> 00:21:45.289 of ideology, embodied by his contempt for poshlost. 00:21:45.490 --> 00:21:48.630 He rendered it as poshlost. Poshlost is that 00:21:48.630 --> 00:21:51.630 untranslatable Russian concept signifying, what, 00:21:51.769 --> 00:21:54.130 vulgarity, pretentiousness, sentimental fakery. 00:21:54.309 --> 00:21:58.049 General philistinism, the smug self -satisfaction 00:21:58.049 --> 00:22:00.750 of the intellectually or artistically bankrupt. 00:22:01.089 --> 00:22:04.990 And he rejected poshlost with the ferocity of 00:22:04.990 --> 00:22:07.940 an aesthetic purist. Mocking it, whether it was 00:22:07.940 --> 00:22:10.500 the chiefly sentimental, the politically reductive, 00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:13.319 or the academically lazy, was a core component 00:22:13.319 --> 00:22:16.279 of his writing. He was seeking high art, untainted 00:22:16.279 --> 00:22:19.059 by mass -produced sentiment. Okay, let's pivot 00:22:19.059 --> 00:22:22.259 back to that dual life, to the rigorous scientific 00:22:22.259 --> 00:22:25.019 calling that Nabokov himself considered equal 00:22:25.019 --> 00:22:27.640 to, if not more gratifying than, his writing. 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:30.559 Entomology was a lifelong, passionate pursuit. 00:22:31.049 --> 00:22:33.410 It was inspired by books on metamorphosis by 00:22:33.410 --> 00:22:35.950 Maria Sibylla Marion that he found as a child 00:22:35.950 --> 00:22:38.069 in the attic of his family's country home. And 00:22:38.069 --> 00:22:39.809 he wasn't just a leisure collector. He was a 00:22:39.809 --> 00:22:42.430 working publishing scientist. He produced 18 00:22:42.430 --> 00:22:45.049 technical scientific articles on lepidoptery. 00:22:45.210 --> 00:22:48.789 He named 12 valid species and genera. His specialization 00:22:48.789 --> 00:22:51.009 was highly focused on the Palaeomatini tribe 00:22:51.009 --> 00:22:54.269 of the Lysanidae, the blue butterflies. A notoriously 00:22:54.269 --> 00:22:56.710 difficult group to classify due to their high 00:22:56.710 --> 00:22:59.130 degree of variability. The legacy of his scientific 00:22:59.130 --> 00:23:02.869 work is undeniable. The genus Nabokovia was later 00:23:02.869 --> 00:23:05.769 named after him, and several species bear epithets 00:23:05.769 --> 00:23:07.809 that allude to him or to characters from his 00:23:07.809 --> 00:23:11.069 novels. His devotion was profound. He said in 00:23:11.069 --> 00:23:14.930 1967 that the Pleasures and rewards of literary 00:23:14.930 --> 00:23:17.890 inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of 00:23:17.890 --> 00:23:20.170 discovering a new organ under the microscope 00:23:20.170 --> 00:23:22.849 or an undescribed species. On a mountainside 00:23:22.849 --> 00:23:26.250 in Iran or Peru. This intense dedication came 00:23:26.250 --> 00:23:28.269 with an extraordinary physical manifestation 00:23:28.269 --> 00:23:31.130 of his focus. We have to highlight the intensity 00:23:31.130 --> 00:23:33.369 of his working method at the Harvard Museum of 00:23:33.369 --> 00:23:36.019 Comparative Zoology. The famous genitalia cabinet. 00:23:36.200 --> 00:23:39.000 The museum still possesses Nabokov's genitalia 00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:41.400 cabinet. Yes, where he meticulously stored his 00:23:41.400 --> 00:23:43.859 collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. 00:23:43.880 --> 00:23:46.220 He specialized in studying these structures because 00:23:46.220 --> 00:23:48.440 they were often the only reliable way to distinguish 00:23:48.440 --> 00:23:50.880 between subtly different species. And he would 00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:53.220 study them under a microscope for up to six hours 00:23:53.220 --> 00:23:56.359 a day, seven days a week. often until his eyesight 00:23:56.359 --> 00:23:59.920 was permanently impaired. That speaks to a monomaniacal 00:23:59.920 --> 00:24:02.359 level of focus that is frankly terrifying, but 00:24:02.359 --> 00:24:05.000 also utterly necessary for the rigor he demanded. 00:24:05.279 --> 00:24:08.680 And that intense focus on taxonomy, on the subtle 00:24:08.680 --> 00:24:11.160 physical structural differences in specimens, 00:24:11.380 --> 00:24:14.559 is the ultimate mirror of his literary insistence 00:24:14.559 --> 00:24:16.960 on factual detail and complex structure. And 00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:19.160 what's most satisfying is that while many professional 00:24:19.160 --> 00:24:21.460 lepidopterists did not take his work seriously 00:24:21.460 --> 00:24:24.559 during his lifetime, he was recently definitively 00:24:24.559 --> 00:24:26.900 vindicated. Okay, this is the ultimate scientific 00:24:26.900 --> 00:24:30.119 aha moment. It is. Based purely on the morphology, 00:24:30.259 --> 00:24:32.380 the physical features of the butterflies he studied 00:24:32.380 --> 00:24:35.380 in that Harvard cabinet, primarily the genitalia 00:24:35.380 --> 00:24:38.539 in a boat hypothesize that the polyamorous blues 00:24:38.539 --> 00:24:41.799 came to the New World in five distinct waves. 00:24:42.099 --> 00:24:44.160 Migrating over the Bering Strait land bridge 00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:46.829 and eventually reaching Chile. Decades later, 00:24:46.869 --> 00:24:49.809 21st century genetic research using DNA sequencing 00:24:49.809 --> 00:24:52.970 confirmed his hypothesis. So Nabokov, the Russian 00:24:52.970 --> 00:24:55.210 emigre novelist, was proven correct by modern 00:24:55.210 --> 00:24:58.069 genetics. It completely validates his dual identity. 00:24:58.430 --> 00:25:01.109 The same analytical, precise, structural eye 00:25:01.109 --> 00:25:03.329 that crafted his prose was the very same eye 00:25:03.329 --> 00:25:05.490 that correctly mapped the evolutionary migration 00:25:05.490 --> 00:25:08.329 of a complex butterfly genus across two continents. 00:25:08.650 --> 00:25:11.289 To understand the man, we need to try and step 00:25:11.289 --> 00:25:14.029 inside his hyper -specific, highly structured 00:25:14.029 --> 00:25:17.900 mental world. Nabokov was a self -described synesthete. 00:25:17.960 --> 00:25:20.500 Which is a fascinating neurological condition 00:25:20.500 --> 00:25:23.420 where the stimulation of one sensory pathway 00:25:23.420 --> 00:25:25.859 automatically triggers a perception in another. 00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:29.039 For him, this meant seeing letters as specific 00:25:29.039 --> 00:25:31.720 colors. He was a visual and conceptual synesthete 00:25:31.720 --> 00:25:34.240 from a very young age. He equated the number 00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:37.059 five, for instance, with the color red. He called 00:25:37.059 --> 00:25:40.279 it colored hearing. He emphasized that the sensation 00:25:40.279 --> 00:25:42.779 came from the act of orally forming the letter 00:25:42.779 --> 00:25:45.220 while imagining its outline, making it a very 00:25:45.220 --> 00:25:48.140 physical experience. And his examples were incredibly 00:25:48.140 --> 00:25:50.960 specific. They show the complexity of his sensory 00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:53.859 experience. The long A of the English alphabet 00:25:53.859 --> 00:25:56.240 had the tint of weathered wood. But the French 00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:59.819 A was polished ebony. The hard G was vulcanized 00:25:59.819 --> 00:26:02.339 rubber. R was like a sooty rag being ripped. 00:26:02.460 --> 00:26:06.000 And the letter X appeared as a steely blue. It's 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:08.049 a completely customized alphabet. And what's 00:26:08.049 --> 00:26:09.869 even more fascinating, almost like a controlled 00:26:09.869 --> 00:26:12.890 genetic experiment, is that his wife, Vera, also 00:26:12.890 --> 00:26:15.569 exhibited synesthesia. So she associated colors 00:26:15.569 --> 00:26:19.150 with letters, too. She did. And their son, Dimitri, 00:26:19.289 --> 00:26:22.029 shared the trait. But the colors he associated 00:26:22.029 --> 00:26:24.470 with some letters were sometimes blends of his 00:26:24.470 --> 00:26:27.349 parents' hues. As Nabokov phrased it, it was 00:26:27.349 --> 00:26:30.170 as if genes were painting an aquarelle. It's 00:26:30.170 --> 00:26:33.430 a wonderful biological detail. This hyper -specific, 00:26:33.769 --> 00:26:37.250 intensely structured sensory world where every 00:26:37.250 --> 00:26:39.910 letter had a unique tint and texture. It must 00:26:39.910 --> 00:26:41.569 have been exhausting. Maybe that's connected 00:26:41.569 --> 00:26:44.109 to his parallel internal struggle. He was a notorious 00:26:44.109 --> 00:26:46.970 lifelong insomniac. He called sleep a moronic 00:26:46.970 --> 00:26:50.029 for... fraternity, mental torture, and a nightly 00:26:50.029 --> 00:26:53.519 betrayal of reason. humanity genius. His insomnia, 00:26:53.619 --> 00:26:55.960 which was a significant feature of his life and 00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:58.140 writing, forced him to try and analyze it with 00:26:58.140 --> 00:27:00.400 the same scientific detachment he applied to 00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:02.359 butterflies. Right. He wrote a compilation of 00:27:02.359 --> 00:27:04.859 his dream diary entries called Insomniac Dreams, 00:27:05.180 --> 00:27:07.359 Experiments with Time. He was trying to turn 00:27:07.359 --> 00:27:09.680 his affliction, his inability to switch off, 00:27:09.819 --> 00:27:11.920 into another subject of artistic and intellectual 00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:14.259 inquiry. Another area where this intellectual 00:27:14.259 --> 00:27:17.480 control manifested itself as pure abstract art 00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:20.460 was in his composing of chess problems. He spent 00:27:20.460 --> 00:27:23.299 considerable time during his exile crafting these 00:27:23.299 --> 00:27:25.980 fiendishly complex puzzles, publishing them in 00:27:25.980 --> 00:27:28.380 Russian emigre journals and later in his collection, 00:27:28.579 --> 00:27:31.940 Poems and Problems. And he connected the intellectual 00:27:31.940 --> 00:27:34.559 rigor of chess composition directly to the writing 00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:37.640 process. He viewed it as a high art form. He 00:27:37.640 --> 00:27:40.519 described the process as requiring originality, 00:27:40.700 --> 00:27:44.119 invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, 00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:47.440 and splendid insincerity, qualities he prized 00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:50.309 in all artistic creation. He noted that the mental 00:27:50.309 --> 00:27:52.970 strain of composing a difficult problem was formidable. 00:27:53.329 --> 00:27:55.730 It caused the element of time to actually drop 00:27:55.730 --> 00:27:58.190 out of his consciousness, suggesting a deep, 00:27:58.230 --> 00:28:01.210 almost meditative form of focus. When we turn 00:28:01.210 --> 00:28:03.250 to his political life, you see a commitment shaped 00:28:03.250 --> 00:28:05.589 entirely by the trauma of his youth and his father's 00:28:05.589 --> 00:28:08.190 legacy. He followed his father's classical liberal 00:28:08.190 --> 00:28:10.869 tradition and was a self -proclaimed white Russian. 00:28:11.150 --> 00:28:14.029 He was fiercely opposed to all forms of centralized 00:28:14.029 --> 00:28:17.410 oppression, czarist autocracy, communism, and 00:28:17.410 --> 00:28:20.630 fascism. His deep opposition to totalitarianism 00:28:20.630 --> 00:28:22.769 was highly personal. His family had a long and 00:28:22.769 --> 00:28:24.829 proud tradition of defending Jewish rights in 00:28:24.829 --> 00:28:27.349 Russia. A tradition he maintained by fiercely 00:28:27.349 --> 00:28:30.609 denouncing anti -Semitism in his works. It's 00:28:30.609 --> 00:28:32.609 important to remember he was only able to escape 00:28:32.609 --> 00:28:34.910 Hitler's Germany with the crucial assistance 00:28:34.910 --> 00:28:38.230 of Russian Jewish emigres who honored his family's 00:28:38.230 --> 00:28:41.690 legacy. He maintained a visceral, lifelong contempt 00:28:41.690 --> 00:28:45.220 for the Soviet Union. He famously said in 1969 00:28:45.220 --> 00:28:47.799 that he would never revisit the country because, 00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:50.619 in his view, there's nothing to look at. His 00:28:50.619 --> 00:28:53.039 American political stances, however, they revealed 00:28:53.039 --> 00:28:55.579 a complex and sometimes contradictory picture 00:28:55.579 --> 00:28:58.579 to contemporary observers. He was utterly appalled 00:28:58.579 --> 00:29:01.500 by racism against African -Americans. He even 00:29:01.500 --> 00:29:03.940 counted Pushkin's multiracial background as an 00:29:03.940 --> 00:29:06.519 argument against segregation. But he also supported 00:29:06.519 --> 00:29:08.799 the controversial Vietnam War effort and voiced 00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:11.259 admiration for Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and 00:29:11.259 --> 00:29:13.819 Richard Nixon. That combination puzzles many, 00:29:13.940 --> 00:29:16.740 but if you filter it through his lens of classical 00:29:16.740 --> 00:29:19.319 liberalism, you start to see the unifying theory. 00:29:19.539 --> 00:29:22.819 He hated any movement that he perceived as undermining 00:29:22.819 --> 00:29:25.859 democratic structure or curtailing individual 00:29:25.859 --> 00:29:29.240 artistic freedom. He expressed profound contempt 00:29:29.240 --> 00:29:32.019 for the new left movements and protesters of 00:29:32.019 --> 00:29:34.900 the 1960s, dismissing them as conformists and 00:29:34.900 --> 00:29:37.779 goofy hoodlums. So his loyalty seemed fixed on 00:29:37.779 --> 00:29:39.940 classical democratic principles, viewing the 00:29:39.940 --> 00:29:42.200 protesters as just another form of ideological 00:29:42.200 --> 00:29:44.900 totalism, which he despised. We also have to 00:29:44.900 --> 00:29:47.039 address the complexity of his views on women 00:29:47.039 --> 00:29:49.440 writers. This is one area where the contradictions 00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:52.680 within the man are just... Stark. He admitted 00:29:52.680 --> 00:29:55.400 early on to a deep prejudice against them. He 00:29:55.400 --> 00:29:57.259 wrote to Edmund Wilson that they were in another 00:29:57.259 --> 00:30:00.220 class. But that view wasn't static. He later 00:30:00.220 --> 00:30:02.059 changed his mind on Jane Austen after a careful 00:30:02.059 --> 00:30:04.299 rereading of Mansfield Park and subsequently 00:30:04.299 --> 00:30:06.680 taught it in his literature course. He also praised 00:30:06.680 --> 00:30:08.779 the American novelist Mary McCarthy and called 00:30:08.779 --> 00:30:11.420 the Russian poet Marina Satyateva a poet of genius 00:30:11.420 --> 00:30:14.329 in his memoir. Yet paradoxically, despite Vera 00:30:14.329 --> 00:30:16.670 being his indispensable translator, editor, and 00:30:16.670 --> 00:30:19.190 secretary, he stated publicly that his ideal 00:30:19.190 --> 00:30:22.109 translator would be male, specifically not a 00:30:22.109 --> 00:30:24.710 Russian -born female. So the professional praise 00:30:24.710 --> 00:30:27.369 and the public preference for a male collaborator 00:30:27.369 --> 00:30:30.970 exist in this profound, difficult tension. And 00:30:30.970 --> 00:30:33.730 finally, we cannot conduct this deep dive without 00:30:33.730 --> 00:30:36.390 addressing the longstanding controversy surrounding 00:30:36.390 --> 00:30:39.599 his most famous work, Lolita. a book that has 00:30:39.599 --> 00:30:41.900 been discussed and debated since its first publication. 00:30:42.220 --> 00:30:44.579 The initial controversy began with the novel's 00:30:44.579 --> 00:30:46.920 publication, where some critics immediately denounced 00:30:46.920 --> 00:30:49.940 it as sheer unrestrained pornography. But the 00:30:49.940 --> 00:30:52.099 most direct accusation of personal compulsion 00:30:52.099 --> 00:30:55.039 came much later, in 1990, from the psychiatrist 00:30:55.039 --> 00:30:58.589 Brandon Centerwall. He argued that Nabokov was 00:30:58.589 --> 00:31:01.049 a closet pedophile and that his decades -long 00:31:01.049 --> 00:31:03.250 focus on this dark theme was a reflection of 00:31:03.250 --> 00:31:06.490 personal compulsion, not detached artistic interest. 00:31:06.910 --> 00:31:09.549 Senerwal used details like Nabokov's invention 00:31:09.549 --> 00:31:12.769 of the term nymphate, the doubled self -referential 00:31:12.769 --> 00:31:15.630 structure of the name Humbert Humbert mirroring 00:31:15.630 --> 00:31:18.509 Vladimir Vladimirovich. And critically, an unsettling 00:31:18.509 --> 00:31:21.190 biographical detail concerning his uncle, Vasily 00:31:21.190 --> 00:31:24.349 Rukavishnikov, or Uncle Ruka, the one from whom 00:31:24.349 --> 00:31:27.400 he inherited the estate. That detail. documented 00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:29.900 in biographies, states that the estate staff 00:31:29.900 --> 00:31:33.119 nicknamed his uncle Ruka, which means hand in 00:31:33.119 --> 00:31:35.640 Russian, because he was known for fondling young 00:31:35.640 --> 00:31:39.079 peasant children. The detail is undeniably unsettling, 00:31:39.160 --> 00:31:41.500 and biographers have confirmed that Uncle Ruka 00:31:41.500 --> 00:31:44.019 did engage in inappropriate physical contact 00:31:44.019 --> 00:31:46.750 with the young Vladimir. It is absolutely crucial 00:31:46.750 --> 00:31:49.109 for us to present the scholarly consensus alongside 00:31:49.109 --> 00:31:51.809 these details. Please do. Despite the unsettling 00:31:51.809 --> 00:31:53.750 biographical connection and the dark subject 00:31:53.750 --> 00:31:56.450 matter of the novel, the consensus in Nabokov's 00:31:56.450 --> 00:31:59.029 studies remains consistent. His personal conduct 00:31:59.029 --> 00:32:02.200 was and remains unimpeachable. So most academics 00:32:02.200 --> 00:32:04.960 view his literary exploration of pedophilia not 00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:07.480 as an autobiographical confession, but as an 00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:10.619 exercise in artistic empathy for victims of abuse. 00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:13.720 And fundamentally, as a detached, necessary exploration 00:32:13.720 --> 00:32:16.420 of a forbidden high -risk theme. For Nabokov, 00:32:16.500 --> 00:32:19.299 the exploration of darkness or violence or forbidden 00:32:19.299 --> 00:32:21.940 themes was purely an aesthetic endeavor divorced 00:32:21.940 --> 00:32:25.059 from morality. Following the huge financial success 00:32:25.059 --> 00:32:27.920 of Lolita, which finally allowed him to be financially 00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:30.670 independent of his academic career. He made his 00:32:30.670 --> 00:32:33.410 final journey of exile, returning to Europe in 00:32:33.410 --> 00:32:36.670 1961. He and Vera settled into the Montreux Palace 00:32:36.670 --> 00:32:39.630 Hotel in Switzerland, and he remained there writing, 00:32:39.829 --> 00:32:42.089 composing chess problems, and taking extensive 00:32:42.089 --> 00:32:45.430 trips into the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt 00:32:45.430 --> 00:32:49.710 butterflies until his death in 1977 from bronchitis. 00:32:50.170 --> 00:32:53.170 He was working on a final, fragmented novel at 00:32:53.170 --> 00:32:55.769 the time of his death, titled The Original of 00:32:55.769 --> 00:32:58.170 Laura. And we close his story with one final 00:32:58.170 --> 00:33:00.829 contradiction. Nabokov had explicitly requested 00:33:00.829 --> 00:33:03.329 that the incomplete manuscript be burned. But 00:33:03.329 --> 00:33:06.430 his wife and son, Vera and Dmitry, ignored that 00:33:06.430 --> 00:33:08.650 request. And it was eventually published posthumously 00:33:08.650 --> 00:33:11.710 in 2009. Even in death, his desire for artistic 00:33:11.710 --> 00:33:14.170 control was debated and ultimately circumvented 00:33:14.170 --> 00:33:16.529 by the very people who had preserved his masterpiece 00:33:16.529 --> 00:33:19.210 decades earlier. What an incredible deep dive 00:33:19.210 --> 00:33:22.269 into structure and contradiction. If we summarize 00:33:22.269 --> 00:33:25.430 Nabokov, you see a master of profound contrast. 00:33:25.960 --> 00:33:28.180 The sophisticated European academic who became 00:33:28.180 --> 00:33:30.500 a pillar of American literature. The emotional 00:33:30.500 --> 00:33:33.480 chronicler of exile who publicly disdained emotion 00:33:33.480 --> 00:33:36.140 in art. And the high art literary stylist who, 00:33:36.200 --> 00:33:39.779 at his very core, was a rigorous, detailed scientific 00:33:39.779 --> 00:33:43.160 taxonomist. The synthesis of his talents is breathtaking. 00:33:44.009 --> 00:33:46.690 His influence is felt deeply by modern writers 00:33:46.690 --> 00:33:49.069 like Thomas Pynchon and John Updike, and even 00:33:49.069 --> 00:33:51.329 in the judicial clarity demanded by figures like 00:33:51.329 --> 00:33:54.029 Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And beyond his novels, his 00:33:54.029 --> 00:33:56.809 translation and intricate commentary on Pushkin's 00:33:56.809 --> 00:33:59.430 Eugene Onagin, specifically the detailed notes 00:33:59.430 --> 00:34:03.309 on prosody, cemented his status as an unparalleled 00:34:03.309 --> 00:34:05.970 literary critic. He showed the world that profound 00:34:05.970 --> 00:34:08.329 literary beauty could be found in meticulous 00:34:08.329 --> 00:34:11.829 structure and linguistic play, not in moralizing 00:34:11.829 --> 00:34:14.329 or sentimentality. He fundamentally argued that 00:34:14.329 --> 00:34:16.389 the highest aesthetic pleasure comes from paying 00:34:16.389 --> 00:34:19.550 great, close attention to style, rejecting the 00:34:19.550 --> 00:34:21.869 popular idea that literature must teach or provide 00:34:21.869 --> 00:34:25.030 easy empathy. And that insistence that intellectual 00:34:25.030 --> 00:34:27.250 and artistic separation of art from required 00:34:27.250 --> 00:34:30.050 morality or social instruction leads us to our 00:34:30.050 --> 00:34:32.030 final provocative question for you to consider. 00:34:32.349 --> 00:34:34.650 Given the complexity of his personal life, his 00:34:34.650 --> 00:34:37.489 sometimes contradictory politics, and the darkness 00:34:37.489 --> 00:34:40.369 of themes like those in Lolita, does Nabokov's 00:34:40.369 --> 00:34:43.110 insistence on divorcing art from morality ultimately 00:34:43.110 --> 00:34:46.070 demand an even closer, more difficult moral scrutiny 00:34:46.070 --> 00:34:48.190 from the reader? Or is the profound structured 00:34:48.190 --> 00:34:50.750 beauty he achieved in his prose truly the only 00:34:50.750 --> 00:34:52.110 measure that matters in the end?