Looking over the train platform at the Warsaw Station before he meets Mary for the last time, Ganin thinks incongruently “about the shooting that had taken the day before on Nevski Avenue,” in reference to violent conflicts between police and crowds supporting the revolution in February, 1917 in St. Petersburg. Ganin notes that the chaos of events have prevented him from contacting his family estate by telephone. Once again, one of the most importance sequence of events in 20th century history seems to register only faintly and tangentially in Ganin’s memory and consciousness, but as they accrue in the novel, it is clear that the revolution represents a watershed in Ganin’s life that is paired with the loss of Mary: the lost love, the lost world of childhood/adolescent innocence, the lost estate, the lost life of privilege—all conspire to represent the relation to the past in Mary.
False Azure: A reading blog of Nabokov's novels
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the window pane"