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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is a crippling experience for him?
(a) Writing poetry in Russian.
(b) Falling off a horse.
(c) Speaking English.
(d) Contracting polio.

2. Other than his wife, what does Nabokov claim about his good friends?
(a) To have made no more than two good friends over a span of twenty years.
(b) They are artists and writers, like himself.
(c) He has many.
(d) They are all writers.

3. Why is Lenski working as a tutor?
(a) To put himself through graduate school at the University in St. Petersburg.
(b) He is paying off a debt to Nabokov's father.
(c) He loves teaching children.
(d) To put his son through undergraduate school at Cambridge.

4. What happens, when winter comes, to their love affair?
(a) It fades to nothing.
(b) It ends.
(c) It comes out in the open.
(d) It has to endure a life of closer scrutiny.

5. What does he do with a poem before he writes it down?
(a) He reads the poem to his mother.
(b) He discusses his ideas with his father.
(c) He writes it on a chalkboard.
(d) He contructs it entirely in his head.

Short Answer Questions

1. What types of tutors does Nabokov's father seem to intentionally choose?

2. What fills Nabokov with surprise, while roller-skating?

3. What is Nabokov called in exile?

4. What earns Vladimir several rebukes from the Tsarist government?

5. What do Yuri and Nabokov invent?

(see the answer keys)

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