Pnin, a refugee in his 50s from both Communist Russia and what he calls the "Hitler war", is an assistant professor of Russian at fictional Waindell College, possibly modeled on Cornell University or Wellesley College, both being places where Nabokov himself taught.
•
:For the Russian poet, see Ivan Pnin.
The game was also featured on Schlag den Raab on 4 June 2011 and was a favorite childhood pastime of the eponymous protagonist of the novel "Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov (p. 106, Vintage).
The titles of Pnin's best-known poems, Man (1804) and God (1805), mirror Derzhavin's on purpose, as he sought to refute the great poet's idealism by taking up the Deist stance of Radishchev, Volney, and d'Holbach.
•
Born out of wedlock, he famously deplored the status of illegitimate children in his 1802 petition to Alexander I of Russia (Pnin's father was rumored to have also illegitimately fathered Poland's Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.)