How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He did not bother to puzzle out why exactly Liza had felt the urgent need to see him on her way back from visiting St. Bartholomew's, the preparatory school near Boston that her son would go to next fall: all he knew was that a flood of happiness foamed and rose behind the invisible barrier that was to burst open any moment now. (2.6.3)
Considering how terrible a person Liza seems like she is, it's amazing that Pnin still feels anything for her. But what do you think that "invisible barrier" is? Why do you think Pnin has a barrier to contain his happiness anyway?
Quote #2
He saw her off, and walked back through the park. To hold her, to keep her—just as she was—with her cruelty, with her vulgarity, with her blinding blue eyes, with her miserable poetry, with her fat feet, with her impure, dry, sordid, infantile soul. (2.6.37)
Like we said, Liza sucks pretty hard. So why do you think Pnin still wants to keep her close to him? Also, whose description do you think this is? Is this how Pnin sees Liza? Or is it how VN sees her?
Quote #3
All of a sudden he thought: If people are reunited in Heaven (I don't believe it, but suppose), then how shall I stop it from creeping upon me, over me, that shriveled, helpless, lame thing, her soul? But this is the earth, and I am, curiously enough, alive, and there is something in me and in life— (2.6.37)
Isn't this weird? In one moment, Pnin is supposedly thinking how much he wants to keep Liza even though she's totally awful. Then the next moment, he's freaking out over their souls being joined in the afterlife. What's going on here? Also, notice that instead of things like fat angels and floating on clouds and other stuff everyone says about heaven, Pnin's got more worries than anything else.
Quote #4
A young yawn distended his staunchly smiling mouth. With sympathy, with approval, with heartache Pnin looked at Liza yawning after one of those long happy parties at the Arbenins' or the Polyanskis' in Paris, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago. "No more reading today," said Pnin." (4.8.33)
Here Pnin is looking at Victor on the evening he comes to visit Waindell. It makes sense that Pnin sees Liza in Victor's features. He is her son after all. Do you think Victor's resemblance to Liza affects the way that Pnin treats him?
Quote #5
Finally, as they walked along a meadow path, brushing against the goldenrod, toward the wood where a rocky river ran, they spoke of their healths: Chateau, who looked so jaunty, with one hand in the pocket of his white flannel trousers and his lustring coat rather rakishly opened on a flannel waistcoat, cheerfully said that in the near future he would have to undergo an exploratory operation of the abdomen, and Pnin said, laughing, that every time he was X-rayed, doctors vainly tried to puzzle out what they termed "a shadow behind the heart." "Good title for a bad novel," remarked Chateau. (5.4.3)
This is so stereotypical that we are glad Nabokov makes fun of himself with the last line of this quote. Of course Pnin's metaphorical heartache has a literal manifestation. Couldn't he have thought of something more original? But at least he recognizes it's pretty cliché. Or is it—what do you think is the cause of Pnin's heart shadow?
Quote #6
Timofey Pnin was again the clumsy, shy, obstinate, eighteen-year-old boy, waiting in the dark for Mira—and despite the fact that logical thought put electric bulbs into the kerosene lamps and reshuffled the people, turning them into aging émigrés and securely, hopelessly, forever wire-netting the lighted porch, my poor Pnin, with hallucinatory sharpness, imagined Mira slipping out of there into the garden and coming toward him among tall tobacco flowers whose dull white mingled in the dark with that of her frock. This feeling coincided somehow with the sense of diffusion and dilation within his chest. Gently he laid his mallet aside and, to dissipate the anguish, started walking away from the house, through the silent pine grove. (5.5.14)
In this scene, Pnin is having a seizure at Cook's Castle and imagining that his ex-fiancée Mira has not been killed by the Nazis. Several times, it seems that the narrator attempts to portray Pnin's relationship with Mira as nothing more than a youthful fling, but we're not so sure. We'll just point out that the memory of Liza never causes Pnin to basically have a heart attack like he does here.
Quote #7
One had to forget—because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car to an extermination camp and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one's lips in the dusk of the past. (5.5.16)
Have you noticed the link between death and love yet? In other cases, this might be a little unusual, but it makes perfect sense for Pnin. Since he left Russia during a period of intense violence, many of the people that he loved either died or were murdered. And Mira is perhaps the saddest of the bunch.
Quote #8
On the distant crest of the knoll, at the exact spot where Gramineev's easel had stood a few hours before, two dark figures in profile were silhouetted against the ember-red sky. They stood there closely, facing each other. One could not make out from the road whether it was the Poroshin girl and her beau, or Nina Bolotov and young Poroshin, or merely an emblematic couple placed with easy art on the last page of Pnin's fading day. (5.5.18)
Watch out for moments like this. This image ends Chapter 5, which is where we learn about Pnin's love for Mira. Every single one of the chapters in Pnin has an image like this that kind of summarizes the main theme of that part of the novel. In this case, it's an image of love in a chapter where we learn about Pnin's greatest love.
Quote #9
You, Lise, are surrounded by poets, scientists, artists, dandies. The celebrated painter who made your portrait last year is now, it is said, drinking himself to death (govoryat, spilsya) in the wilds of Massachusetts. Rumor proclaims many other things. And here I am, daring to write to you. I am not handsome, I am not interesting, I am not talented. I am not even rich. But, Lise, I offer you everything I have, to the last blood corpuscle, to the last tear, everything. And, believe me, this is more than any genius can offer you because a genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do. I may not achieve happiness, but I know I shall do everything to make you happy. (7.3.6)
We'll wait a second while you dry your eyes. Is that not the most touching and romantic of love letters you ever read? Okay, it's a little dorky, but still we think it's pretty nice. We don't normally get to see Pnin express any strong emotions, but how do you think he feels about Liza? Compare that to how VN feels about her.
Quote #10
I want you to go on with your psychotherapeutic research—in which I do not understand much, while questioning the validity of what I can understand. Incidentally, I am sending you under separate cover a pamphlet published in Prague by my friend Professor Chateau, which brilliantly refutes your Dr. Halp's theory of birth being an act of suicide on the part of the infant. I have permitted myself to correct an obvious misprint on page 48 of Chateau's excellent paper. I await your" (probably "decision," the bottom of the page with the signature had been cut off by Liza). (7.3.6)
And it gets even more romantic, right? But that's beside the point: even in his declaration of love Pnin is not allowed to have the last word. Liza cuts off his signature and the final portion of the letter. We wouldn't be surprised if she does the exact same thing to him in real life, cutting off everything that he tries to say.