ABSTRACT
The life and writings of Vladimir Nabokov offer a means of elucidating and refining the subtle relationship between the separation-individuation phase of development and later creative endeavour as well as an opportunity to re-examine the general concept of sublimation. The family retained “a bewildering sequence of English nurses and governesses” during Nabokov’s childhood and, when he was 10 1/2 months, his brother Sergey was born. Nabokov displayed “an abnormal aptitude for mathematics”, having “learned numbers and speech more or less simultaneously at very early date.” Nabokov also introduces the element of control in his description of hypnagogic imagery. “They come and go, without the drowsy observer’s participation, but are essentially different from dream pictures for he is still master of his senses.” In the summer of 1915, Nabokov fell in love for the first time with a young girl named Tamara whom he met at the same place where a year earlier he had written his first poem—“The rainbow-windowed pavilion.”
