“One is always at home in one’s past...”
The novel is sort of psychoanalysis into the mind of the remarkable author Nabokov, therefore, delves into his past. The autobiography takes us through his childhood and both familial and romantic relationships and handles the details of his psyche. Nabokov shows the reader how these aspects made him who he is in terms of personality and artistic prowess. Thus, the assertion demonstrates the significance of the past to one’s future therefore for him the past always feels familiar.
“Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter- to monstrously remote points of the universe.”
Known as an intuitive writer and moreover a hopeless romantic through his exceptional works of literature. Therefore, the element of absolute surrender to love for someone else in something innate for Nabokov and incorporates in his works. The novel highlights the origin of this sentiment for the outstanding author, from maternal love he shared with his mother to his romantic lover. The assertion encompasses this dynamic of him as a romantic at heart individual.
