The Russian-born poet and novelist Vladimir Nabokov was married to a Jewish woman, a fact that led the couple to flee from Berlin to Paris with their son in 1937, and then from Paris to the U.S. in 1940. Less known is the fact that Nabokov’s own maternal great-grandfather was born a Jew. With this in mind, Maxim Shrayer considers the converted Jews and Christians of Jewish descent who populate Nabokov’s English and Russian fiction, and what they signify about the author’s attitudes toward religion and Judaism:
Vladimir Nabokov regularly returned to the topics of religious transformation and religious conversion in his letters and autobiographical writing. His views of religious conversion, however, would be less interesting if they didn’t set some of the central axes of his Russian- and English-language fiction. Aspects of mimicry in nature fascinated and excited Nabokov as “signs and symbols” of complexity and beauty. Mimicry in society, and especially religious mimicry—from dissimulation to conversion—reminded him of the unresolved—unresolvable—contradictions of his own family and marriage.
Forming an imperfectly monosyllabic pair in both of Nabokov’s main languages, two of Nabokov’s great novels, the Russian-language The Gift (Dar, partially serialized 1937-38, complete book edition 1952) and the English-language Pnin (partially serialized 1953-55, complete book edition 1957), clamor to be recognized for their dynamic exploration of the religious conversion of Jews born in the former Russian empire. Structural differences and compositional ambitions apart, in a number of ways The Gift, including its abandoned Part 2, could be considered a pre-Shoah dress rehearsal of Pnin.
Pnin’s last name, not easily pronounceable for a native speaker of English, is usually treated as a truncated one (from Repnin or Cherepnin, and perhaps signaling his ancestor’s illegitimate birth) or as one derived from the Russian noun pen (tree stump). However, the last name Pnin also suggests a Hebrew origin and a meaningful connection with Peninah, a character in the Hebrew Bible.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/nabokov-religious-conversion-holocaust