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“…and freshness wafts from the garden” (V.V. Nabokov)
Annotation
Project director: Associate Professor at the Department of Horticulture and Decorative Gardening, Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, Lennara Khairova
Author of the design project: Artistic Designer Tatiana Kuvshinova
Our project is dedicated to the Russian writer and poet Vladimir Nabokov. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. His father was a barrister and socially-prominent liberal. His mother, neé Rukavishnikov, was from a Siberian family of gold-mine owners. It was a happy, close-knit family – the Nabokovs were one of the wealthiest clans in St. Petersburg.
The world of material things, given to him from birth, remained forever in his memories as a childhood inhabited by parents, brothers and sisters – a portrait of happy life in Russia.
The revolution was a catastrophe that deprived him of his homeland (in 1919, Nabokov fled Russian with his parents, never to return). His father died tragically in Berlin in 1922, marking the start of long years of wandering – England, Germany, France, the U.S. and Switzerland.
But dwelling in his memory was the indelible paradise of childhood and profound homesickness, like an obsession – in his thoughts, he was always in Russia. From 1919 on, Nabokov never had his own house: student cells at Cambridge, rooms at boarding houses, rented apartments, professorial cottages, and the Palace Hotel in Montreux. There was never another house, because he only had one Home, there – in Rozhdestveno, in Petersburg, in Russia… His happy childhood and youth found their expression in his works.
… In my breast I finger the bone:
My native land, this is your home.
Nabokov “hunted” for butterflies with a butterfly net his entire life – they were a part of Nabokov’s world that followed him from childhood right up until the last days of his life. He discovered 20 butterfly species. His collection encompasses 4324 specimens – a scientific treasure trove. In 1945, Nabokov developed a new classification for pygmy-blues.
Velvety-black, in the warm shimmer of the mature plum, it bursts open;
alights on the trunk, and flutters its jagged, delicate wings, tumbling towards the bark, then twisting into the light…
Our project is a portrait of Nabokov’s garden and family nest, the house at the Rozhdestveno estate on the banks of the River Oredezh.
The bright door is ajar, we peek inside – what have we here?
… I shut my eyes – and in an instant, light and resonant, I’m standing once again in that unforgettable parlor, at the estate, at home, in heaven…
… and freshness wafts from the garden, from the depths of lush lanes…
Summer… In the garden, among the flowers, the table has been set: sparkling-white table cloth, boiling samovar, and around the table – wicker chairs, a bicycle leaning against the railing…
…and I feel your eternal spring:
the corner of the house, the old oak,
the garden-raked sand.
It is here, at this table, that our hero’s loved ones are about to gather: parents, sisters, brothers, friends…
… Oh! If only to forever stay,
not relinquishing the dewy, glorious days!