A Mother's Influence

I am well into Speak, Memory and I am loving every line. Each sentence brings me closer to understanding the man who writes these magnificent prose. In Chapter Two though in which Nabokov writes about his Mother and their relationship. I was struck by how he talks about her influence on his senses and personality. Which heavily influences his writing style in that he writes about every minute detail of his characters and their surroundings. That is what ultimately makes his writing so verbose and wonderful. As the reader, each paragraph that you encounter is like a little scene all its own. All this attention to detail in every moment in life is what his Mother gave him in their time spent together.

Nabokov writes, "My mother did everything to encourage the general sensitiveness I had to visual stimulation. How many were the aquarelles she painted for me; what a revelation it was when she showed me the lilac tree that grows out of mixed blue and red!" He goes on to write about how he entertained himself with her jewels she left for him and the many colored facets they provided for his enjoyment.

This stimulation and her tendency to focus on the little things shine through his writing. Both having the predilection to see the details that make every moment important and special. In his writing he goes into great detail describing sounds and the details of a scene as if it were a photograph set before you he was talking about. My favorite though is his writing about sounds as if they are colors that he is seeing and describing. One such example of this is in the closing chapter of Lolita when he writes, as I horribly misquote, that there are sounds and colors that do enjoy each others company. It is one of the more beautiful page and a half in Lolita that I will quote much later. Another example is in his work Transparent Things, which we will not read, that is as follows, "Hugh, a sentimental simpleton, and somehow not a very good Person (good ones are above that, he was merely a rather dear one), was sorry that no music accompanied the scene, no Rumanian fiddler dipped heartward for two monogram-entangled sakes. There was not even a mechanical rendition of 'Fascination' (a waltz) by the cafe's loudplayer. Still there did exist a kind of supporting rhythm formed by the voices of foot passengers, the clink of crockery, the mountain wind in the venerable mass of the corner chestnut."

Nabokov is a master of prose and this is shown through is attention to every detail of a scene. This gift that he shares with the world can be traced back to his Mother and their way of living in the moment and not seeing what is ahead. She was the formative figure that made him the way he is and made his writing what it is. This is the power that parents have on their children. No wonder Nabokov writes of her throughout his work Speak, Memory. His Mother was the one who helped him to become the writer we have come to know and love to this day!