Biography

Dimitri Nabokov was born on May 10, 1934 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor, known for Una Jena in Cassaforte (1968), Omnibus (1967) and Saturday Review (1984). He died on February 22, 2012 in Vevey, Switzerland.

Dmitri is an opera singer and translator of his father's works.

Only child of Vladimir Nabokov and Véra Evseevna Slonim Nabokov.

An only child was born in Berlin, Germany. His family fled for France in 1937 and came to New York City in 1940. He studied history and literature where he earned a Bachelor's Degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1955. He also studied opera at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1959, he trained for the opera at the La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy.

He was a competitive race car driver until 1965. After his mother died in 1991, he moved into her Montreux apartment.

He is survived by his literary agent, Andrew Wylie; no relatives or known immediate survivors. He never married or had children.

[on his father's writing] If there is a quality overlooked in his writing by some of the more obtuse commentators it is that gentleness coupled with a total honesty on every plane and an utter freedom from anything cruel, cheap or mean.

[on his father's unpublished book] Would have been Father's most brilliant novel, the most concentrated distillation of his creativity but whose release in incomplete form he expressly forbade.

[on his father's last moments] Tears suddenly welled in Father's eyes. I asked him why. He replied that a certain butterfly was already on the wing; and his eyes told me no longer hoped he would live to pursue it again. Nor would he ever visit that enchanted mountain valley on the far side of the lake. But perhaps, in Father's memory, I shall.