Phi’s Reviews > Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited > Status Update
Phi
is on page 50 of 316
The restraint and tenderness with which Nabokov writes about his mother is quite moving... Interesting that his mother might have had some influence in his sensitivity and interest in nature:
— Feb 22, 2026 12:49AM
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Phi
is on page 76 of 316
“[...] In my own case, when I come over Sophie's troubles again—her lack of eyebrows and love of thick cream—I not only go through the same agony and delight that my uncle did, but have to cope with an additional burden—the recollection I have of him, reliving his childhood with the help of those very books. I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window. Its reflection fills the
— 16 hours, 14 min ago
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Feb 22, 2026 12:15PM
"To love with all one's soul and leave the rest to fate, was the simple rule she heeded. "Vot zapomni [now remember]," she would say in conspiratorial tones as she drew my attention to this or that loved thing in Vyra—a lark ascending the curds-and-whey sky of a dull spring day, heat lightning taking pictures of a distant line of trees in the night, the palette of maple leaves on brown sand, a small bird's cuneate footprints on new snow. As if feeling that in a few years the tangible part of her world would perish, she cultivated an extraordinary consciousness of the various time marks distributed throughout our country place. She cherished her own past with the same retrospective fervor that I now do her image and my past. Thus, in a way, I inherited an exquisite simulcrum—the beauty of intangible property, unreal estate—and this proved a splendid training for the endurance of later losses. Her special tags and imprints became as dear and as sacred to me as they were to her."
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