Dmitri Nabokov, son of acclaimed ‘Lolita’ novelist Vladimir Nabokov, dies in Switzerland

Washington Post - A.P. ^ | 2/25/12

[Borges]

Dmitri Nabokov, the only child of acclaimed novelist Vladimir Nabokov who helped protect and translate his father’s work while also pursuing careers as an opera singer and race car driver, has died. He was 77.

The younger Nabokov died Wednesday at a hospital in Vevey after a long illness, literary agent Andrew Wylie said Friday. He had been hospitalized in January with a lung infection.

Dmitri Nabokov spent much of his life trying to carve a life away from the shadow of his father, whose books “Lolita” and “Pale Fire” are regarded as some of the best English prose ever written.

The Harvard-educated son was a mountain climber, opera singer, race car driver and playboy. But Dmitri Nabokov always returned to protecting his father’s literary legacy, translating and editing his father’s plays, poems, stories, the novella “The Enchanter” and “Selected Letters.”

“My father is gradually marching — with his two favorite writers, Pushkin and Joyce — arm in arm into the pantheon to join the greatest of all, Shakespeare, who is waiting for them,” Nabokov told The Associated Press in a 2009 interview. “I like to think that I did my bit to keep things on track.”

[Graybeard58]

Comparing Nabokov to Shakespeare?

Really?

[Borges]

Well they were both among the supreme Anglophone writers of their time...and of all time.

[blueunicorn6]

An opera singer and a race car driver? Well, I can see how talent in the one area would transfer to the other.

[A_perfect_lady]

Opera singer and race car driver. Opera singer... and race car driver. You know, I’m having trouble getting my mind around that one. Opera singer. Race car driver. He must have been a Dos Equis drinker.

[A_perfect_lady]

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky

I always loved that.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

mountain climber? meh

opera singer? neh

race car driver and playboy? Oh yeah!

[Yardstick]

Dmitri Nabokov spent much of his life trying to carve a life away from the shadow of his father

It would be hard to be the son or daughter of a legendary talent. I can feel the shadow of my grandfather who was not even a legend but who was very distinguished in certain ways, and this is two generations down.

[Yardstick]

Some others that come to mind are Sean Lennon and Jakob Dylan. They never equaled their fathers, which must nag at them. Or maybe not, if they are very well grounded.

[Jack Hammer]

Comparing Nabokov to Shakespeare is a silly notion; Nabokov was a brilliant writer technically - even more of an accomplishment inasmuch as English was not his first language - but his writings are devoid of moral content.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Indeed, in some ways I consider my great grandfather the “high water mark.”

[Borges]

There are clear themes that recur from work to work and a worldview that clearly hates tyrrany and cruelty. He wasn’t the least bit interested in didactic fiction.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[Jack Hammer]

In reading Nabokov, I merely got the impression that he hated the variety of cruelty represented by the Soviets - and for the simple reason that they did him out of his wealthy and privileged heritage and stifled creativity, primarily creativity such as his own.

One cannot blame him for this; however, to rank him with Shakespeare is silly.

IMO, he was a brilliant technician who viewed the world through an intensely self-oriented window.

[Borges]

He is regarded as among the last century’s greatest writers in English. And he would have actually agreed with your assessment of his view of the world and Art; artists have to be devoted to themselves.