The document provides details about the writer Joy Li's visit to St. Petersburg, Russia to learn about two of literature's greatest writers - Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Nabokov. It describes Li staying in the Dostoevsky Suite at the Grand Hotel Europe, and visiting the Dostoevsky Literary-Memorial Museum, where Dostoevsky spent his last days writing The Brothers Karamazov. It also details a visit to the Nabokov Museum located in the house where Nabokov was born, which focuses on his life and works, including his famous novel Lolita. Both museums provide insights into the lives and passions of the two renowned Russian writers.

1. PASSION
Renowned as one of the world’s most beguilingly
beautifully cities, Russia’s cultural capital St.
Petersburg is also celebrated as home to some of the
world’s most beloved novelists. Writer Joy Li braved
winter snows to learn more about two of literature’s
greatest writers.
I
nconspicuous, Room 107 can be
found at the far corner of the
northern wing of Grand Hotel
Europe’s Historic Floor. The oldest
hotel in St. Petersburg, the Grand has
dedicated 10 historic suites, each to
a unique theme. This room is named
after the Russian literary genius Fyodor
Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.
There is a sufficient reason to honour
this all-time great writer with a corner
suite, for he often based the heroes of
his novels such as Crime and Punishment
and The Brothers Karamazov in corner
houses. And, as a frequent guest of
Grand Hotel Europe himself, the great
man purposefully asked for corner
rooms - the benefit being able to secretly
observe people outside, as they crossed
the snowy street.
Stepping into the Dostoevsky Suite, I
was immediately swept into the writer’s
mood, deep and serious. The living room
seems to brim with literary ambience,
under the window, sits a large writing
desk, and a book shelf displaying his
major works in both Russian and
English.
St. Petersburg is Russia’s second
largest city and its cultural heart. While
in late June it offers non-stop fun during
the famous “White Nights” festival -
when the northern sun never truly sets,
now in full winter the dark skies set the
tone for serious reflections amid the
fluffy snow.
It was indeed enchanting that I
stay in the Grand Hotel Europe, where
five-star facilities, fine authentic Russia
cuisine and iconic cultural events such
as ballet performances at Tchaikovsky
Night bring endless delights.
But at the same time, the hotel’s
prime location conveniently links it to
the city’s must-see historic and religious
sites, including the State Hermitage
Museum, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, The
Church of Our Savior of the Spilled
Blood, the Kazan Cathedral, and the
Peter and Paul Fortress, to name just
A LITERATURE
LOVERS GUIDE TO
a few. The city which was built by Peter the
Great in the early 1700’s as an ambitious
attempt to modernise Russia, is drenched in
rich history and culture.
However, as I stroll through the city’s
palaces, stunned by the imperial lavishness
and the grand feast of art, I could not escape
the memory of the portrait on the wall of
my room, No. 107, the Dostoevsky Suite. The
writer’s gloomy yet resolute face urges me to
embark on a literary excursion.
It is not difficult to find genuine literary
shrines for St. Petersburg is the birth place
and final resting place for some of the greatest
minds of modern literature. I select two
destinations for my literary time travel - the
F.M. Dostoevsky Literary–Memorial Museum
where the writer spent his last days, and
the Nabokov Museum, where the author of
the controversial novel “Lolita” spent his
childhood.
It is about a 20-minute walk from Grand
Hotel Europe to the Dostoevsky Museum.
Opened in November 1971 at 5/2 Kuznechny
Lane, the corner building looks plain and
ordinary. The basement is the entrance.
Dostoevsky moved his family here in early
October 1878 and remained until his death on
January 28, 1881, aged 59. It was in this house
that the prolific writer finished his last and
most important work, The Brothers Karamazov.
The Church of Our
Savior of the Spilled
Blood is among a
dozen historic and
religions sites in St.
Petersburg Russia’s
cultural capital.
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2. PASSION
“I have never regarded any of my
works as seriously as I do this one,” he
wrote to a friend regarding the now
legendary novel.
The museum apartment contains an
entrance hall, a washroom, nursery, the
wife Anna Grigorievna’s room, a dining
room, sitting room and the writer’s
study, where the clock on the table is
said to have stopped at the precise time
of Dostoevsky’s death at 8:36pm. Plagued
by epilepsy and financially strained, the
writer and his family lived a modest life.
I could feel a sense of stubbornness in
the man who chose to uphold his firm
beliefs out of pure passion. In his last
days, his readers wrote him confessional
letters full of tormenting spiritual
problems, and he would reply just as
sincere.
The literary exhibition rooms
chronologize key events in the
writer’s life with historical items,
including manuscripts, letters and
faded photographs. Seeing these items
automatically sets you on an emotional
quest: where did the strength of
the writer, and the many steadfast
characters he created in his novels,
come from?
On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky,
together with a group of fellow men
As time grinds on, this stubbornness
continued in the veins of this most
modern writer, albeit in the form of
absolute individualism.
My second literary destination is
also only 20-minutes’ walk from the
hotel, but in the opposite direction.
Vladimir Nabokov, the great exiled
Russian writer, was born in the house
at 47, Bolshaya Morskaya Street, in
April 1899. However, when the Russian
Revolution broke out in 1917, Nabokov’s
family, wealthy and intellectual, fled to
America.
This museum was opened in 1998
and occupies the first floor where the
former dining room, drawing room and
library remain largely original. Nabokov
talked extensively about this house and
his family in his autobiographical novel
Speak, Memory.
The first lines of his most famous
work Lolita, which deals with a middle-
aged man seducing a teenage girl,
were fully expecting to be put to death,
on charges of plotting against Tsar
Nicholas I.
At the last moment, however, as
they were taken to the public square
to be executed, the death sentence
was changed to hard labour in the
frozen wilderness of Siberia. For years
Dostoevsky lived with murderers and
thieves. He later wrote to his brother:
“During my four years in prison, I finally
learned how to discern the human in
criminals. Would you believe – among
them are deep, strong, beautiful
characters and what bliss it was to
discover gold under a rough shell…
In general my time was not wasted. If
not Russia, I at least came to know the
Russian people well, to a degree that
most people perhaps do not.
“To find the human in man” drove
the writer to expand his ability to
understand, and to love the unimportant
and the underprivileged in society.
echoes in my mind as I step into the
exhibition room.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the
tongue taking a trip of three steps down
the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo.
Lee. Ta.”
In the main exhibition room, what is
striking is Nabokov’s personal butterfly
collection, and the drawings of all kinds
of butterflies, which he dedicated to his
beloved wife and muse, Véra Nabokov.
He admitted that “from the age of
seven, everything I felt connected with
a rectangle of framed sunlight and was
dominated by a single passion. If my first
glance of the morning was for the sun,
my first thought was for the butterflies it
would engender.”
Nabokov believed that he was born a
painter and attached great significance to
colour in his writing. He was gifted with
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3. WORDS JoyLi
Russia’s palate
pleasures
PASSION
novels, poems and short stories are all a
kind of tribute to Russia, to its literature,
its language and his own childhood.
Asked why he wrote at all, the author
who devised Lolita and her seducer
– two of literature’s most celebrated
creations, Nabokov simply said: “For
the sake of pleasure, for the sake of
difficulty. I have no social purpose, no
moral message. I’ve no general ideas to
exploit, I just like composing riddles
with elegant solutions.”
This was his stubbornness.
But now I must call an end to
my literary excursion. It is six in the
afternoon, already deeply dark on a
winter’s day in old St. Petersburg. I need
to ramble back to the lobby bar of the
Grand Hotel Europe, and seal everything
in my memory with a bracing shot of
vodka.
a rather weird ability, seeing letters in
colour. For example, he saw his initials
V and N as quartz pink and grayish-
yellowish oatmeal colour respectively.
In Nabokov’s library, visitors can sit
down to watch a 1962 BBC interview
titled “Half an hour with Nabokov.” This
is definitely a must-see which provides
deep insights into his literature and his
life.
At the beginning of the film, set
against the backdrop of snow-topped
mountains in Switzerland where the
interview took place, the exiled Russian
writer stated: “I will never return to
Russia, I will never surrender. The
grotesque shadow of a police state will not
be dispelled in my lifetime.” He died in
1977, in Switzerland.
Despite feeling intellectually at home
in America, Nabokov admitted that his
A
spoonful of genuine Russia caviar paired
with a glass of authentic Russia vodka – this
is pure pleasure drenched in a rich history.
But don’t think too much! cautions the
erudite vodka sommelier.
Yes, the Caviar Bar at Grand Hotel Europe has a
dedicated expert to guide guests through hundreds of
different types of vodkas. And he will gently remind
you to ‘’Drink up in one shot!” Simply follow these
Russian rules and immerse yourself in the refreshing
delight.
The Russian loves vodka and recognizes it as the
little water of life. [The Slavic root word voda literally
means “water.”]
A millennium ago, when faced with the choice
between Orthodox Christianity and Islam as the
national religion, Prince Vladimir of Kiev opted for the
former because Islam banned drinking. “Drinking is
the joy of the Rus. We cannot live without it,” he said,
settling the matter.
Genuine Russian vodka is produced from hand-
selected wheat and pure, soft river water. This purity
deserves full respect. At the same time, its inclusivity
creates an interesting experience for the palate. We
tried home-made vodkas with chillies and with
cherries, each item soaked in vodka for two weeks
respectively. The taste of each was smooth, yet with a
strong individual signature character.
Caviar, served slightly chilled with sour crème
in chopped eggs, is all about indulging in one of the
most sensual tastes that Nature has to offer. In fact,
the word caviar refers to fish eggs, or roe, extracted
from several types of sturgeon and cured in salt
brine. Russian fishermen first learned to prepare
caviar in the 12th century.
Today the delicacy is among the world’s
most expensive and exclusive culinary treats.
Construction of dams which sever rivers and so
destroy spawning grounds, water pollution, and
rampant poaching, have made sturgeon a truly
endangered species. But at the Caviar Bar, the finest
quality caviar is still on offer, together with the finest
vodkas. Prince Vladimir would surely be happy to
pull up a chair here.
Above:
Vladimir Nabokov,
author of the
controversial novel
“Lolita,” dedicated
drawings of all kinds
of butterflies to his
beloved wife and muse,
Véra.
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