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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 15.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why do they hire the village schoolmaster, though he is not technically one of the family's regular tutors?
(a) To give them French lessons.
(b) To give them mathematics lessons.
(c) To give them a crash course in the Russian language.
(d) To give them writing lessons.

2. How does Nabokov sum up Demitri's toddler years?
(a) "My son is the most whimsical, creative child I have ever met."
(b) "Never in my life have I spent more time out of doors, in museums, and playing than I have with my son."
(c) "I have never run, played, cried, or laughed more in my entire life."
(d) "Never in my life have I sat on so many benches and park chairs, stone slabs and stone steps, terrace parapets and brims of fountain basins as I did in those days."

3. Once, upon returning from the park with a poem freshly in his mind, what does he do?
(a) He recites it to his nanny.
(b) He recites it to his sister.
(c) He recites it to his grandmother.
(d) He decides to recite the work to his mother.

4. What is seen as a dreaded event?
(a) Speaking in public.
(b) Sleep.
(c) Eating.
(d) Writing.

5. What does he describe with obvious revelry?
(a) The feeling of power and excertion in playing a game of lawn tennis with family and friends.
(b) The feeling of isolation and contentment when writing a work of poetry.
(c) The feeling of freedom in hunting and capturing a new species of butterfly.
(d) The feeling of selfless isolation that such prolonged expenditures of concentration engenders.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Nabokov remember about his father's remarkable writing ability?

2. What is one thing he recalls suddenly becoming aware of while creating a poem?

3. What does the rain cause to grow on the estate?

4. Who rents a modest summer cottage called a dachka?

5. What casts a cloud over the exiled Russian intelligentsia?

(see the answer key)

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