How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He tried to teach me to find the geometrical coordinations between the slender twigs of a leafless boulevard tree, a system of visual give-and-takes, requiring a precision of linear expression, which I failed to achieve in my youth, but applied gratefully, [...]not only to the drawing of butterfly genitalia during my seven years at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, [...] but also, perhaps, to certain camera-lucida needs of literary composition. (4.5.5)
Even if you don't buy that Nabokov made use of his childhood drawing education as an adult writer, it's hard not to admire his ability to draw relationships between visual art, Lepidoptera, and writing books. This interdisciplinary approach reflects the kind of educational experience Vladimir got as a kid, with tutors for everything from drawing to French to science.
Quote #2
"...I don't know what kind of teacher he was, but I do know that you were the most hopeless pupil I ever had." (5.5.9)
It's funny to think of Vladimir Nabokov, this super-smart writer/thinker type as a terrible student, but here (and at Cambridge) it seems that he had trouble with directed learning. But clearly, he had no problem with his own self-motivated scholarly pursuits. Why do you think this is?
Quote #3
In choosing our tutors, my father seems to have hit upon the ingenious idea of engaging each time a representative of another class or race, so as to expose us to all the winds that swept over the Russian Empire. (8.1.2)
By having tutors of all backgrounds, Vladimir will learn to appreciate the worth of people from every walk of life. Here's a place where Vladimir's father's politics guide his parenting, or so it "seems." This is a guess on Nabokov's part. Do you agree?
Quote #4
In the early eighties, my maternal grandfather, Ivan Rukavishnikov, not finding for his sons any private school to his liking, had created an academy of his own by hiring a dozen of the finest professors available and assembling a score of boys for several terms of free education in the halls of his St. Petersburg house (No. 10, Admiralty Quay). The venture was not a success." (8.3.5)
In this family story, it's easy to see: in early twentieth century Russia rich people can choose to work outside the system, while poor ones have no choice. But for Vladimir, this isn't the objectionable part. He worries about this type of plan because it would disrupt his freedom. Even Lenski's boring slide projections are better than that.
Quote #5
They accused me of not conforming to my surroundings; of "showing off" (mainly by peppering my Russian papers with English and French terms, which came naturally to me); of refusing to touch the filthy wet towels in the washroom; of fighting with my knuckles instead of using the slaplike swing with the underside of the fist adopted by Russian scrappers. (8.4.2)
When Vladimir is finally sent to school, he sticks out like a sore thumb. After all, he's used to the international, cosmopolitan tutors, and time to be alone in the mornings, looking for butterflies. When the school administrators accuse him of "showing off," it seems like they might be saying more about his wealth (and his classmates' relative poverty) than his behavior.
Quote #6
In thinking of my successive tutors, I am concerned less with the queer dissonances they introduced into my young life than with the essential stability and completeness of that life.
(8.5.1)
For Vladimir, having tutors wasn't always just about learning a subject. Rather, being tutored was a time to be mentored, guided, and directed. His father and mother might be off elsewhere, but there were still adults around tending to his needs. Lucky.
Quote #7
In the place where my current tutor sits, there is a changeful image, a succession of fade-ins and fade-outs; the pulsation of my thought mingles with that of the leaf shadows and turns Ordo into Max and Max into Lenski and Lenski into the schoolmaster, and the whole array of trembling transformations is repeated. (8.5.1)
In the description of this transformation, Nabokov seems to be saying that it almost didn't matter who his tutor was, as long as he was being tutored. But given how vivid the characterizations of some of the tutors,(particularly of Mademoiselle and Lenski), it seems insincere. Does this feel like the case to you? Why might Nabokov say this?
Quote #8
One winter night, being behind with a set task and preferring pneumonia to ridicule at the blackboard, he exposed himself to the polar frost, with the hope of a timely sickness, by sitting in nothing but his nightshirt at the open window (it gave on the Palace Square and its moon-polished pillar); on the morrow he still enjoyed perfect health, and, undeservedly, it was the dreaded teacher who happened to be laid up. (9.1.2)
Vladimir may have been a bum of a student, but his father was incredibly driven. Worried that he wasn't prepared, he tried to get himself sick rather than go in the next day and fail. While Vladimir's father was rebellious, deciding early on not to work for the Tsar, Vladimir had no similar need to rebel. Is the lack of rebellion in part to blame for Vladimir's less-than-desirable studentship?
Quote #9
The story of my college years in England is really the story of my trying to become a Russian writer. I had the feeling that Cambridge...existed merely to frame and support my rich nostalgia. (13.2.3)
Cambridge University continues to be one of the most well respected educational institutions in the world. So this quote says a lot about the emotional and intellectual impact of exile on a person. Instead of being "merely" a student, Vladimir feels a responsibility to earn back the identity and connection to his past he lost when leaving St. Petersburg.
Quote #10
I suddenly felt that something in me was as naturally in contact with my immediate surroundings as it was with my Russian past, and that this state of harmony had been reached at the very moment that the careful reconstruction of my artificial but beautifully exact Russian world had been at last completed. I think one of the very few "practical" actions I have ever been guilty of was to use part of that crystalline material to obtain an Honours degree. (13.4.5)
Vladimir might've been a miserable student at Cambridge, or so Nabokov tells us. He takes pleasure in saying that he didn't even know where the library was, that he skipped lectures, and spent time chasing girls and staging practical jokes. But meanwhile, big intellectual investigations were afoot, and Vladimir avoided the horrors of sleep by spending each night working on writing about his Russian identity, or what was left of it.