In this section of Speak, Memory, Nabokov provides the atmosphere for his vision and remembrances of time, of space, and of his family and attachments. Like the French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922), he searches and wanders through lost time; also like Proust, he recovers pockets of personal lost time and presents images of a now gone era, of now altered spaces, and of long dead family members and acquaintances.
Nabokov tells the reader that he has often tried to transcend the limits of mortality by reaching back to a time before his birth. The closest he can come to doing so, he says, is childhood. He describes his childhood as one of unspoiled privilege, a happy one. The principal members of his family are introduced, its elder members aristocratic and educated, pampered with.....
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