![]() ![]() ![]() The Nabokov side of the family is facially challenged, or so Nabokov says, with a piggy, upturned nose and lightly-filled eyebrows.Nabokov's paternal grandfather was the Minister of Justice under two different Tsars, and married a German baroness whose father was serving the Russians at the time.After 1494 or so, Nabokov men worked with the Russian government and military.His father's first cousin and his own first cousin are both hobbyist-genealogists: they chart the family back to 1380.In this section, Nabokov gets totally geeked on his family history, starting by looking at his family crest: he thought it was bears playing chess, but it's actually just some lions not doing much. ![]() All he's saying, maybe, is that ignorant people will focus on what they know, and never learn anything new, because they don't even know to look for it. The beginning of this section is a good example of how Nabokov's language can feel a little thick: "An inexperienced heraldist resembles a medieval traveler who brings back from the East the faunal fantasies influenced by the domestic bestiary he possessed all along rather than by the results of direct zoological exploration." (3.1.1) Though you may want to back away slowly, just take a breath and break it down. ![]()
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