Nabokov investigates the meaning of the family's coat of arms and writes a detailed summary of the family's long, and, in some cases, celebrated history. Reference to the Nabokov family first appears in a rural document from 1494, when Russia is under the rule of Ivan the Third.
The ancestors on his paternal, Russian side include an explorer, the sister of a prominent Decembrist, and Dmitri Nabokov, the author's grandfather, who served as Minister of Justice for eight years.
Nabokov's mother is of aristocratic German descent. The ancestral line is filled with artists, composers, and scientists, including Carl Heinrich Graun, a prominent composer in the eighteenth century. His mother's German surname is Von Korff, and her family members are frequently connected with the political affairs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nabokov feels the strongest.....
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