![]() ![]() ![]() To what do you attribute her statement?ħ. At Véra Nabokov's first encounter with a new Goethe scholar at Cornell, she immediately informed him, "I consider Faust one of the shallowest plays ever written" (page 187). In your opinion, was the Nabokovs' a happy marriage? Do you think Nabokov's passionate affair of 1937 left a lasting mark on the marriage? Did that affair come as a surprise to you, or did you sense it coming?Ħ. ![]() Do you see Véra Nabokov as a victim? Does your view of her change-once, or incrementally, or not at all-in the course of the biography? Does she strike you as an appealing character?ĥ. To what do you attribute Véra Nabokov's secretiveness? Relatedly, how do you explain the couple's unwillingness to answer the question of how they first met?Ĥ. Do you think the Nabokovs' joint gift for synesthesia-"the ability to transfer the observations of one sense into the vocabulary of another" (page 38)-had any impact on their relationship?ģ. ![]() Vladimir Nabokov? How did Véra Slonim's father shape the person she would become? Do you think it mattered that her mother was to a large extent invisible in her own childhood?Ģ. Do you think this tells you anything about the woman who would become Mrs. Schiff describes the Russia of Véra Slonim's childhood as one in which Jewish families obligatorily engaged in "what must have seemed like a colossal, rigged game of Simon Says" (page 20). ![]()
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