Speak, Memory

Chapter eight, section 3, paragraph 3

In this section of nabokovs autobiography, I see some direct reference to the idea of Nabokov "giving" elements of his personal experience to the characters in his novel writing. In this section he describes a cousin of his, and uses language similar to how he describes the "nymphettes" in his book "Lolita". A couple parts of the description were actually exact duplicates in language. When he describes his eleven year old cousin (a nymphettes age) as having "alice in wonderland hair" I noticed he used that exact description to describe an imaginary nymphette in his novel. He also speaks of the preteen cousins neck, he very often speaks of Lolita's neck. His close observation of his cousin in that scenario and how he took note on several visual details down to her hip movement, and the skin underneath her clothing portrays something very interesting to me.it seems to hint on this experience being one of his early dawnings of sexuality in his adolescence. Nabokov describes his cousin in how his young self saw her, showing in what way he viewed her, without explicitly telling, which Nabokov is very good at. When he describes the boy sitting on his other side, he does not dwell on him for long, and it becomes even more apparent that he is closely watching the girl, a subtlety that takes nabokovs point even further. This section made me wonder if his early adolescent perceptions on girls that were his age at the time (and using his amazing memory to reaaccess those experiences,)  gave him inspiration for a book that is about an adult that is attracted of girls of that age.