Because they are ten years old, the romantic notion does not take shape, and although the pair daringly hold hands during a movie, this is as far as their romance progresses. Biarritz, in the South of France, is a playground for well-to-do families, and it is here that he meets the writer Colette, whom he develops a crush on, deciding that the only reasonable course of action to take is to elope with her. Vladimir turns ten years old in 1909, and heads to Biarritz with his family. He becomes more and more obsessional and is rarely seen without his butterfly net. His first obsession is butterflies, which he hunts in the woods and catches, then keeps in a collection after his mother has killed them and preserved them. Nabokov begins to show signs of obsessive compulsive disorder at the age of seven.

He later learns French from a private teacher whom he at first doesn't like, but comes to appreciate enormously, using her as the basis for multiple characters in his novels. He is a Russian child but takes easily to learning languages, and when he learns English begins to read English books voraciously. He talks of her with love, and it is clear that the two were extremely close.Īs he grows up, Nabokov is looked after by a succession of nursemaids, governesses and nannies, some he likes, some he does not care for. This condition is hereditary and is just another thing that brings the young man and his mother together. He also has synesthesia, which is the experience of certain letters of the alphabet being allocated a particular color in his brain. Nabokov tells us that even as a small child he was prone to having hallucinations.

He also starts to notice the world around him and to understand that he is a small cog in a huge wheel when it comes to his place in the world.

This is the way in which he comes to understand the passing of time seeing his parents on film as individual people who existed quite successfully without him before his birth is a jarring experience for him, but it is also a powerful lesson. We first meet Vladimir in his natural habitat: sitting in his family's country estate watching old family movies, most of which were filmed before he was born.

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Nabokov speak memory