Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for [...]"

So begins Speak, Memory (1967), quite likely the most extraordinary autobiography I have ever read. The author, Vladimir Nabokov, of the Lolita fame calls it an "assemblage of personal recollections." As the author points out in Foreword, many of these recollections had been published before, mainly in English, and this final edition offers many revisions including ones introduced when the author was translating the text into Russian. He writes, using literary recursion, that the current version represents:

"[...] re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English re-telling of Russian memories [...]"

Mr. Nabokov had a privileged and unusual childhood and youth at his family estate about fifty miles south of St. Petersburg and in various great cities and vacation resorts of Europe. His family had aristocratic roots and included very high-level government officials and diplomats. It also had "a traditional leaning toward the [...] products of Anglo-Saxon civilization." The "Westernization" of his childhood went to the extent that he learned to read English before he could read Russian.

The richness of detail from the author's past is overwhelming. Even distant members of the author's family are vividly portrayed. Each one of the gallery of nurses and governesses from his childhood is depicted in minute detail. So is every tutor from his teenage years. The three "first loves" of his childhood and youth are described in beautiful, evocative prose: Colette on the beach in Biarritz and their attempt at elopement, Polenka on his estate near St. Petersburg - probably the most poignant of the stories as it is colored by a touch of class difference - and finally Tamara, whom he was showing various secret spots in the woods near the estate. (By the way, the story of Tamara gave Mr. Nabokov an opportunity to make a tremendous pun: he mentions the gardener, named Apostolski; yet after the narrator and Tamara's walk in the woods the gardener's name changes to Priapostolski.)

The reader will find several fascinating themes in the autobiography. For instance, Mr. Nabokov writes about his synesthesia, "colored hearing:"

"[...] I see q as browner than k, while s is not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl."

Nabokov had been interested in butterflies since childhood; in his adult age he even worked as a butterfly museum curator and published research papers on Lepidoptera. And let's not forget chess: the author was a passionate composer of high quality chess problems and studies.

This being Vladimir Nabokov's work, it is beautifully written: I am quoting one stunning passage after the rating. The autobiography is also viciously funny. I particularly love Nabokov's ridiculing the "medieval world" of theories of one Sigmund Freud (the "Viennese Quack.") And how can one not love Nabokov's praise of writings of Vladimir Sirin, particularly if one knows that Nabokov used Sirin as his pseudonym.

I will finish with a pure speculation on my part. The author mentions that "to avoid hurting the living or distressing the dead, certain proper names have been changed." In another place he admits that he has used in his novels various real people whom he met in his early years. This make me ponder a possibility that maybe - just maybe! - Mr. Nabokov allowed himself to borrow in the other direction: from his literary world to his autobiography. That maybe not just names have been changed but also the characterizations of people he supposedly knew have been constructed rather than rendered from memory. This sacrilegious idea occurred to me as I have recently read J.M. Coetzee's The Good Story with its strong argument how people create fictions about themselves all their lives.

Four and a half stars.

"Tamara would be waiting, perched on the broad parapet with her back to a pillar. I would put my lamp and grope my way toward her. One is moved to speak more eloquently about these things, about many other things that one always hopes might survive captivity in the zoo of words - but the ancient limes crowding close to the house drown Mnemosyne's monologue with their creaking and heaving in the restless night."



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