How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #13
The magic has endured, and whenever a grammar book comes my way, I instantly turn to the last page to enjoy a forbidden glimpse of the laborious student's future, of that promised land where, at last, words are meant to mean what they mean. (4.1.4)
There is a feeling throughout the book that people and their memories are fleeting. For Vladimir, his first sense of home is lost, along with his childhood. For this author, language is the key to sustained security and clarity.
Quote #14
Her Russian vocabulary consisted, I know, of one short word, the same solitary word that years later she was to take back to Switzerland. This word, which in her pronunciation may be phonetically rendered as "giddy-eh" (actually it is gde with e as in "yet"), meant "Where?" [...] "Giddy-eh? Giddy-eh?" she would wail, not only to find out her whereabouts but also to express supreme misery: the fact that she was a stranger, shipwrecked, penniless, ailing, in search of the blessed land where at last she would be understood. (5.1.6)
What's sadder than poor Mademoiselle, standing on a Russian train platform, calling out her only Russian word?
Quote #15
...something of her tongue's limpidity and luster has had a singularly bracing effect upon me, like those sparkling salts that are used to purify the blood. This is why it makes me so sad to imagine now the anguish Mademoiselle must have felt at seeing how lost, how little valued was the nightingale voice which came from her elephantine body. (5.6.5)
It can be easy to think that those who aren't fluent in your own language know "less," but here Nabokov's mourning this untruth: no matter how beautiful Mademoiselle's French, Lenski refused to hear her beauty.