On One of the Biographical Sources of Pale Fire

Abstract

Abstract:The paper focuses on one of the possible biographical sources of Pale Fire. The link between biographical details of some of the members of the well-known Botkin family of Russia and the novel's Botkin/Kinbote is studied. Two of the Botkin family members, like the Botkin of Pale Fire, were creators of a fictitious story of a royal who had supposedly escaped death during the Revolution and became an exile, and one of them wrote a book about it. One of these Botkins was known to Nabokov personally in his Berlin years.