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Speak, Memory

by Vladimir Nabokov

4.19 · rating details · 3,101 ratings · 256 reviews

The late Vladimir Nabokov always did things his way, and his classic autobiography is no exception. No dry recital of dates, names, and addresses for this linguistic magician--instead, Speak, Memory is a succession of lapidary episodes, in which the factoids play second fiddle to the development of Nabokov's sensibility. There is, to be sure, an impressionistic whirl throu...more

Paperback, 316 pages

Published February 16th 1989 by Vintage (first published 1951)

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Jul 19, 2007

Allycks rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This is, in my opinion, Nabokov's best work. The autobiography as a form suits Nabokov perfectly, as his novels are never so much about plot or 'big ideas,' just the intense poetic possibilities of language itself. So be forewarned, there is almost no useful information here. You may learn a thing or two about pre-Revolution Russia, a scrap of detail about his encounters with Joyce in Paris, or some tidbits about butterfly hunting, but really there's nothing to be learned, no story, no clues ...more

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Mar 17, 2008

Sanjeev rated it

Shelves: done, recommend-nonfiction

Disgusting that a somebody could be such an amazing writer. (And this is a person born in Russia, writing in English!) The word "genius" seems to come up a lot when people speak of Nabokov. Having read this, I now understand.

It took me some time to become used to the way he writes. Nabokov often does not seem to care if his point is immediately clear to the reader. Some of the gems I found in this book I could just as easily have missed in a quicker read. So close atte...more

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Feb 10, 2008

Claire Olivarez rated it

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I just prefer his fiction. I understand that this is one of the most important autobiographies/memoirs ever written, but I fail to see why. I admit that Nabokov's "poetic prose" really shines through, at certain times; however, on the whole, I found the narrative voice to be frustrating, pompous, and oppressive.

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Apr 17, 2010

K.D. rated it

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books

Shelves: 501, memoirs

Wow! This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read! Prior to this, top in my list were Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Harry Bernstein's The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers.

Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory neither has that sorry circumstance of being a born in dirt-poor Irish family nor being a witness to a tragic love story between two people of different religions. Rather, the young Nabokov was the eldest child of a rich political couple residing on a big hous...more

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Jun 16, 2007

Brian Levinson rated it

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Best autobiography ever. Excluding Davey Johnson's "Bats," and Keith Hernandez's "If At First...," of course, because the 1985 National League East pennant race was far more interesting than Nabokov's life. Although, I have to say, for introspection and overall quality of writing, Nabokov has those other two beat.

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Oct 11, 2008

Lavinia rated it

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Shelves: 2008, journals-biographies-memoirs

Not too many things to say about Nabokov’s memories. It’s just that you discover the writer behind his work (so far Lolita, in my case), daydreaming and wishing you were one of his playmates in that idyllic Russian countryside or my old love, Sankt Petersburg. His incursions into the past, Mnemosina, as he calls his memories, reveal, as I suppose everyone expects, an avid reader or (surprise?) a passionate entomologist, a young man spending his nights solving or creating chess problems or skippi...moreNot too many things to say about Nabokov’s memories. It’s just that you discover the writer behind his work (so far Lolita, in my case), daydreaming and wishing you were one of his playmates in that idyllic Russian countryside or my old love, Sankt Petersburg. His incursions into the past, Mnemosina, as he calls his memories, reveal, as I suppose everyone expects, an avid reader or (surprise?) a passionate entomologist, a young man spending his nights solving or creating chess problems or skipping classes to be with the girl he loves. I really, really liked the passages describing his family, (his father especially), his English nannies or Mademoiselle, Russian tutors or servants. I’m afraid to call him a genius or anything of that sort, as I saw some people did, I just enjoyed reading his memories and now I’m tempted to give a chance to Pnin, Ada or something else.

***

Ca o incununare a celor spuse pina aici, voi prezenta un minunat caz de auz colorat. Poate ca “auz” nu este cuvintul foarte potrivit, de vreme ce senzatia de culoare pare a fi produsa prin insasi actiunea mea orala de a alcatui o anumita litera in timp ce imi imaginez “conturul” ei. “A” lung din alfabetul fonetic englez [si la acest alfabet ma refer mai departe, cu exceptia cazurilor cind precizez ca este un altul] imi evoca tenta lemnului ars de intemperii, in timp ce un “a” frantuzesc imi sugereaza abanos lustruit. Acest grup negru mai include “g” tare [cauciuc vulcanizat] si “r” [o cirpa murdara de funingine care e sfisiiata]. “N”, ca faina de ovaz, “I”, neputincios si prostanac, precum si oglinjoara de mina cu dos de fildes a lui “O”, fac parte din grupul alb. Ma deruteaza frantuzescul “on”, pe care-l vad ca pe suprafata tensionata, care da pe afara, a alcoolului intr-un pahar mic. Trecind la grupul albastru, gasim “x”-ul ca de otel, “z” ca un nor de furtuna si “k” semanind cu merisorul. Intrucit exista o interactiune subtila intre sunet si forma eu il vad pe “q” mai maron decit “k”, in timp ce “s” nu este bleu precum “c”, ci o combinatie ciudata de azuriu cu sidef. Nuantele apropiate nu se contopesc si diftongii nu au culorile lor distincte, decit atunci cind sint reprezentati printr-un singur caracter intr-o alta limba [astfel litera ruseasca gri si pufoasa, cu trei tulpini, reprezentind sunetul "ş", o litera la fel de veche ca apele navalnice ale Nilului, influenteaza reprezentarea ei in engleza].

Ma grabesc sa inchei lista pina nu sint intrerupt. In grupul verde sint: “f”, cel ca frunza de arin, “p”, ca un mar necopt si “t”, de culoarea fisticului. Pentru “w” nu gasesc ceva mai bun decit un verde inchis combinat cu violet. Sunetele galbene includ diversele “e”-uri si “i”-uri, “d”-ul crem, “y”-ul auriu stralucitor si “u”, a carui valoare alfabetica nu o pot exprima decit prin “aramiu cu un luciu masliniu”.

In grupul maron sint: nuanta bogata, cauciucata, a moalelui “g”, aceea mai palida a lui “j” si aceea de sireturi bej a lui “h”. In sfirsit, printre cele rosii, “b”are nuanta denumita de pictori “siena arsa”, “m” este un pliseu de flanel roz iar astazi am gasit echivalentul perfect al lui “v”, acela de “cuart trandafiriu”…(less)

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Jul 11, 2008

AK rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: those who appreciate prose style and things Russian

Shelves: im-in-love, college, world-and-mind-changers

A gift of a book, a beautiful memoir.

Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter - to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unkn...more

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Mar 16, 2011

Tim Hainley rated it

I don't think I was quite in the mood for this. Obviously it's incredibly well-written. I mean, if I was the end result of the breeding of tens of generations of Russian intellectual nobility, I'd probably be a smarty pants too. Sorry, smarty écouter. Still, while I enjoyed the gauzy nostalgia of his childhood, I felt like there was a lot of interesting story I was missing, replaced for some reason by extensive descriptions of butterfly collecting. Sure, it's still Nabokov writing about butterfl...more

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Dec 04, 2008

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

An wormhole of synthestesia and nostalgia. Absolutely strange but organically beautiful. It's like a letter written home to Memory as a mother. I don't think there any other memoir is structured quite like this one.

""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 hea...more

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Jul 03, 2011

John rated it

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Nabokov fascinates me. Before reading this book I was under the impression that his brain worked differently than mine and perhaps differently than most peoples. My impression was that he was a genius, not for his literary works, but rather his literary works were a result of his being a genius. Reading this book ensures me that my impression is correct.

Nabokov describes sounds as having colors to him. Nabokov says he hears voices regularly but they mostly say the most benign thi...moreNabokov fascinates me. Before reading this book I was under the impression that his brain worked differently than mine and perhaps differently than most peoples. My impression was that he was a genius, not for his literary works, but rather his literary works were a result of his being a genius. Reading this book ensures me that my impression is correct.

Nabokov describes sounds as having colors to him. Nabokov says he hears voices regularly but they mostly say the most benign things. Nabokov indicates he was a math savant until a very high fever took that ability away from him. Nabokov was an avid butterfly collector and creator of complex chess problems. The sum of these, along with his mastery of writing in multiple languages, makes his brain something wholly other than mine. He is an Uber-man as far as I am concerned.

I found his early life most interesting. His upbringing, his relationship with his parents, (particularly his mom), his education and his seemly wide amount of freedom. Nabokov seemed to be very aware of his surroundings at all times and seemed to read other people very well. The details that he remembers form his childhood fascinate me. All the more so that many of these details have been integrated into his novels. He indicates that many of the details of his books are stolen from real like memories of people, objects and situations.

The sections on his life after fleeing Russia where much less interesting. Maybe because he was married he barely mentions anything of his active love life as an adult. But maybe he has written all about this in his stories.

In the added extra chapter not included in the original publishing Nabokov weaves 4 alter egos together. The last chapter is written as if it were a criticism of the book by someone else, so you have 1. Nabokov the author and 2. his criticism of himself. But he furthers the dialogue by discussing 3. Sirin, his better known pen name he used while in exile in Europe and 4. Vasili Shishikov, his more secretive pen name he used to trap reviewers. I loved this tour de force.

In his genius I get the impression there was a striking difference between Nabokov and James Joyce. Joyce come across as someone who knows he is smarter than everyone else in the room and will make sure everyone knows it. Nabokov seems to care less of proving himself to anyone. Instead he seems to let his mind pull him to wherever it wants to go. I look forward to reading more of Nabokov’s work.
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Apr 16, 2011

David rated it

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Shelves: american, autobiography, english

I actually do think this book was amazing, but amazing is not necessarily enough to be totally enamored. Nabokov is the ultimate people's intellectual, hovering only just within reach of those who consider themselves a little better than the hoi polloi: keeping himself there by threatening at any moment to go beyond - and at moments even going beyond, and taking a breather, with a Gauloise, from the stench of the commonality in his ivory tower. His overweening snobbishness whisks him to fantasyl...more

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Jul 26, 2010

Silvia rated it

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Oh, the snobbest of the snobs.
How do you read a book about "privilege", when it comes in the form of a male author (privilege enough), then of an uber-upper pre-Revolution Russian rich, then as a famous writer writing about his own past?
Well, it irked me a lot in the beginning. Nabokov hated sleep because it was too egalitarian, in his view... but then, moving beyond one's own personal counter-snobism, I can't say I was not mesmerized by some of his sentences, and moved b...more

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May 17, 2010

Scott Sell rated it

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The thing that got me to read this book, which Nabokov originally published as individual short stories – purportedly fiction – then collected into a book which he termed an autobiography, was the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. Orhan Pamuk selected and read the chapter about Nabokov’s father’s duel.

I read Pamuk’s The New Life, after I accepted a job in Turkey, but before I moved there and I liked the book. I think this was more out of excitement for the county than for his novel. Tho...moreThe thing that got me to read this book, which Nabokov originally published as individual short stories – purportedly fiction – then collected into a book which he termed an autobiography, was the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. Orhan Pamuk selected and read the chapter about Nabokov’s father’s duel.

I read Pamuk’s The New Life, after I accepted a job in Turkey, but before I moved there and I liked the book. I think this was more out of excitement for the county than for his novel. Though I did go to the town of Kars, the eponymous city and setting of Snow. (Kars = Turkish for snow), I’ve never read that book or any of his other novels, which seem too thick to me. But after reading Speak, Memory, I am now excited to look at Pamuk’s autobiography Istanbul. He mentions in the podcast that he thinks he writes too much like Nabokov. I hope his memoirs are as good and N’s

The book focuses on Nabokov’s childhood and adolescence in Saint Petersburg and in Vyra, where the family had a dacha, and is certainly full of good stories. But, really, the book is about memory and how it works. Without addressing the topic explicitly, he attacks it formally. I don’t think the fact that the chapters of the book were originally published as fiction is irrelevant. Memory and imagination are not very different things.

My favorite few pages, which I think show what I trying to say about Nabokov’s use of form, are the ones in which he describes the arrival of WWI, the war that would lead to the rise of the Bolsheviks who would force his family to flee Russia. He starts a paragraph by describing a particular Christmas: he and his brother peek at their presents before morning then pretend to be surprised when it comes time to open them. His mother can tell they are faking their enthusiasm. At the beginning of a sentence she starts crying and before the period comes, Russia has entered the war, the family has lost its wealth and are wandering around Europe as displaced émigrés then the father is assassinated. And it isn’t even that long of a sentence. The guilt over his youthful transgression and the image of the mother crying dominate the paragraph and overpower the enormous events of history. This seems to me like an accurate description of how memory works.

I think it’s also interesting to think about this book in terms of other writer’s autobiographies. Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs and Niklos Kazanzakis’s Report to El Greco come to mind because they are both clearly chocked full of lies. Neruda claims the first edition of Espana in Mi Corazon was published on paper made from the uniforms of Franco’s capture soldiers, and Kazanzakis says that he wrote all of his novels in couple of days on the beach, presumably right before he banged out his autobiography. It gives me hope for Pamuk.

I think this book was my second most satisfying experience with Nabokov. My first was listing to Lolita as read by Jeremy Irons. I did this while building a bed on the front porch of a house in Tororo, Uganda. I had to sand the wood by hand it took forever and it was very hot work. I’d work and listen in the morning and watch the rains come in over Kenyan boarder. I think that’s when I realized how funny Nabokov is.
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Mar 14, 2010

rmn rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction-other, biography

A great writer, a phenomenally interesting life, and a unique autobiography.

It's good enough to be fiction (though some of it kind of is, as parts are written in the third person with Nabokov meeting a pseudonymed version of himself) and Nabokov even plays with the typical chronological outline of an autobiography (each chapter is a natural progression, but within the chapters he moves ably around in time).

Nabokov remains an unparalleled writer of the english language and thi...more

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Mar 02, 2010

Ryan Dieringer rated it

I wish I had written a review when I had put this thing down, a book that made me want to be a writer, that totally blew open my understanding of literature and its relationship to life - especially in this case the distinction between memoir and fiction (which in many ways mirrors the relationship between life & art). I wrote an email to my friend Ben the day I wrote it. Some excerpts, if you're interested.

"....Suddenly, Nabokov's guarded individuality, his fierce defense of hi...moreI wish I had written a review when I had put this thing down, a book that made me want to be a writer, that totally blew open my understanding of literature and its relationship to life - especially in this case the distinction between memoir and fiction (which in many ways mirrors the relationship between life & art). I wrote an email to my friend Ben the day I wrote it. Some excerpts, if you're interested.

"....Suddenly, Nabokov's guarded individuality, his fierce defense of his poetic disposition became brilliantly clear to me. It was this sentence - "Nowadays, the mental image of matted grass on the Yaila, of a canyon i the Urals or of salt flats in the Aral region, affects me nostalgically and patriotically as little, or as much, as, say, Utah; but give me anything on any continent resembling the St. Petersburg countryside and I am your man."

I am your man. This simply english phrase suddenly said so much - I realized that the tone of reservation in the novel was not uptightness but rather a confident and very brave dedication to the purity of his own memory - to the idea that fiction is to be "given away" as he so eloquently describes when he discusses his first verse writing, but that memoirs are for oneself and oneself alone.

Hence, the paradox of "I am your man -" a moment in which the colloquiality betrays the fierce reserve of an exile, and yet makes blindingly clear the lines he has so firmly put in place between his private ownership over his own tastes and memories, and the expression of these things - which enables him to engage so casual an expression....

This odd state in which the words of the memoir exist is in some ways another public "verbal adventure," but in most ways the most utterly private writing a most brilliant writer could have conceived. How else can one reconcile the use of the word "pallid" as a pervasive placeholder for "white" - to take advantage of almost every possible opportunity for alliteration. He must say "pallid" a million times, humbly, playfully, self consciously. ...."
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Dec 15, 2009

Sherwood Smith rated it

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Shelves: autobiography

This exquisitely written memoir evokes life before and after the Bolshevik revolution, and how the author, as a youth, coped with violent change not just of government, but of paradigm, and above all of character. He is aware even as a child that many of the people he knew were caught in amber--people of their time, unwilling or unable to cope with change.

Nabokov here, as elsewhere, exhibits the art of characterization; I regard Nabokov to be Henry James' superior, for all the latte...more

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Aug 08, 2007

Brie rated it

He has an absolutely amazing vocabulary which he uses totally un-pretentiously and beautifully. I loved the way that he took forever to tell stories and never really got around to saying anything, and his dry sense of humour was great, as in the game of reminiscences about the writer that he played with his friend, and his descriptions of his tutors. It was really touching the way he adresses his wife in the writing (although without really giving any information about her).

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Feb 04, 2012

Christina rated it

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Not an easy read, and definitely not a fast read. I've never read a book so fast (this was required reading for university), and I felt like I missed very much. My brain feels pretty fried, too. That said, Nabokov is one of few people whose arrogance I can kind of tolerate--he really is brilliant. This book itself is a bit of a puzzle. He shifts from one memory to another in a way that reflects how memory actually works (hence the title, the command he gives his memory to speak and the fragments...more

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May 23, 2007

Sabina Chen rated it

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Shelves: favorites

When you get to read a memoir of a writer you admire, it's like sharing an intimacy. Nabakov remains elusive to me because of his crazy brilliance, but in Speak, Memory, he shares his childhood and loves, chasing butterflies and associating color to the alphabet, loves he carried on into adulthood. A wonderful, non-linear narrative, of course; structured like the spiral snatchings of memory.

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Dec 10, 2010

Ammie rated it

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So "Lolita" is one of my favorite books, and I've long wanted to read Nabokov's memoirs; perhaps I wanted to read them so much that they couldn't quite live up to my expectations. What I love about this book is that it bucks the formal biographical tradition; some chapters are straightforward--amusing and interesting but relatively traditional accounts of family, for instance--but others are perfect micro-pictures of a particular person or time or occasion. There's an entire chapter a...more

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Oct 21, 2011

Phil rated it

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I hate to give this book only three stars. I really do. Nabokov is one of my favorite writers, and this is one of his more highly regarded works. There are stretches—usually a good-sized paragraph, but sometimes as short as a single sentence or as long as a few pages—where the writing is as good as anything of his I've read. But the long accounts of his ancestors—their governmental appointments, their acquaintances with obscure historical figures—and of the often dull lives of his tutors and gov...more

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Nov 03, 2011

Catherine added it · review of another edition

“From my place at table I would suddenly see through one of the west windows a marvelous case of levitation. There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawling in midair, his limbs in a curiously casual attitude, his handsome, imperturbable features turned to the sky. Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he ...more“From my place at table I would suddenly see through one of the west windows a marvelous case of levitation. There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawling in midair, his limbs in a curiously casual attitude, his handsome, imperturbable features turned to the sky. Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceilings of a church¸ while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin."(p.15)

"And the next moment I was among them. Over the small shrubs of bog bilberry with fruit of a dim, dreamy blue, over the brown eye of stagnant water, over moss and mire, over the flower spikes of the fragrant bog orchid (the nochnaya fialka of Russian poets), a dusky little Fritillary bearing the name of a Norse goddess passed in low, skimming flight. Pretty Cordigera, a gemlike moth, buzzed all over its uliginose food plant. I pursued rose-margined Sulphurs, gray-marbled Satyrs. Unmindful of the mosquitoes that furred my forearms, I stooped with a grunt of delight to snuff out the life of some silver-studded lepidopteron throbbing in the folds of my net. Through the smells of the bog, I caught the subtle perfume of butterfly wings on my fingers, a perfume which varies with the species- vanilla, or lemon, or musk, or a musty, sweetish odor difficult to define. Still unsated, I pressed forward. At last I saw I had come to the end of the marsh. The rising ground beyond was a paradise of lupines, columbines, and pentstemons. Mariposa lilies bloomed under Ponderosa pines. In the distance, fleeting cloud shadows dappled the dull green of slopes about timber line, and the gray and white of Longs Peak.

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness-in a landscape selected at random-is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern-to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal." (pp.102-3)

"Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love—from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter—to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. … When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. … I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence." (pp.225-6)(less)

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Jun 10, 2010

William Herschel rated it

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Recommends it for: writers who are aspiring autobiography writers, Nabokov fans

Shelves: own, nonfiction, 2010

When I think of any autobiography or memoir in comparison I want to laugh, 'cause they'll never be this good.

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 (at some forty-five hundred heart beats an hour).

I could see myself in some suspended loop, finishing this boo...more

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Feb 15, 2010

Saxon rated it

Besides being practically in tears from the first page, I am so impressed (though not surprised) of Nabokov's ability to unravel those strange, seemingly meaningless memories of moments that, as is, say and expose very little about one's life, and bring some sort of beauty and sense to that tangled web of our past recollections. As expected, its all done with Nabokov's classic, old-man arrogance which I guess could be a turn-off for some people, but those kind of readers you probably don't want ...more

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Dec 31, 2009

Chris rated it

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Undeniably the work of a literary genius at the top of his game, Speak, Memory is beautiful, canonical, worth every moment invested, and unforgettable. It does what only the best literature does - expands the mind of the reader, deepens and broadens their worldview, and enriches their own life with the thoughts of the author, vicariously held and gracefully given. Surely one of the best prose stylists of the 20th Century, Nabokov tells his life story from birth until roughly 1940 in the most re...more

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Sep 16, 2011

John E. Branch Jr. rated it

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Shelves: memoir

One of the first things you're likely to learn from a review, at least an American one, of Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory is something he never mentions in so many words: the economic circumstances of his youth. The prominence given to those circumstances may be an acceptable shortcut in a review--after all, it's an impression many readers of the book will come away with--and Nabokov had no need to tell us what his story shows us well enough. Yet it's mostly taken for granted, a part of the ba...moreOne of the first things you're likely to learn from a review, at least an American one, of Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory is something he never mentions in so many words: the economic circumstances of his youth. The prominence given to those circumstances may be an acceptable shortcut in a review--after all, it's an impression many readers of the book will come away with--and Nabokov had no need to tell us what his story shows us well enough. Yet it's mostly taken for granted, a part of the background, hardly among the major impressions given by this memoir; for me, those had more to do with such writerly skills as portraiture and scene-setting and the telling detail, as well as deeper matters of flux and loss and recollection. Nabokov even issues a sort of warning (intended, he says, not for the general reader but for "the particular idiot who, because he lost a fortune in some crash, thinks he understands me"). He explains, "The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes."

Nabokov lived a divided life, so clearly bifurcated that Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd split his two-volume biography across the line. (By curious coincidence, a similar sense of divided worlds underlies my current taste for two fantastical TV programs, Fringe and The Walking Dead, so there was a peculiar fitness to my discovery of this book at this moment.) The division was not, however, between the "fabulous wealth and privilege" of Nabokov's youth that reviewers are quick to point out and everything later; it was between what Boyd's biography calls the Russian years, which extended beyond the revolution and were partly spent in Europe, and the American years, which again led back to Europe. Scattered here and there in Speak, Memory are glances at America, the vantage point from which Nabokov wrote and later revised it, but the book is concerned essentially with the first half of his life, beginning with a single moment of recognition in 1903 and ending very neatly in 1940 with a view of the ship which was to take Nabokov, his wife, Vera, and their son, Dmitri, across the Atlantic.

What comes between those two points is far from a straightforward, linear narrative, though. It's structured instead by way of subjects and themes. Among them: the pursuit of butterflies and the devising of chess puzzles; poetry and the Russian language; Nabokov's mother, with whom he shared, among other things, a form of synaesthesia; his early loves—one I think of as "Colette at the Beach" (despite the irrelevant echo of an Eric Rohmer film), and Polenka, daughter of the family's head coachman, and Tamara, whose letters sometimes reached Nabokov even in the midst of revolution; the history of various branches of his family, in which some readers will detect, in a mention of Nova Zembla, the origin of an invented country in Pale Fire; a governess, and his tutors, and his time at Cambridge.

One is seldom thinking, in the midst of life, how a certain prior circumstance led to this one, and where, beyond an immediate goal, this one is heading; what flits through consciousness are, as much as anything else, perceptions, and associations that bridge distances, and the feelings that lend color to scenes. Yet such is our fondness for this-led-to-that stories (particularly after the rise of historicism in the 19th century, which gave historians a useful tool and the rest of us the illusion of knowing how we got where we are) that experience is often turned into such a tale in our retelling—what had been a wandering becomes a line. Nabokov's memory, or his sense of art, or more likely both, are more resourceful and canny than that. His memory is clearly prodigious, as are his powers of evocation, but his art is highly selective and compositional. He declares at the end of chapter six, "I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip." And his book works much like that, although I never tripped. It has something in common with earlier styles of portraiture that will array about a subject numerous signs of character and position, and a little in common with Cubism as well, in which multiple perspectives are present in a single view. There's even an incident that may remind one of the late works of Ibsen, in which the dreams within may sometimes (like the helpers and servers of The Master Builder) appear to affect the world without, though that incident, involving an anticipatory vision of Nabokov's mother, could equally well be read in light of Keats's comparison of the imagination to Adam's dream—"he awoke and found it truth." Nonetheless, Speak, Memory has much to do with time. A photograph may be true to a moment but also false to time because it has frozen the moment out of time's flow; similarly, one is aware in many ways while reading this book that what Nabokov has recaptured is nonetheless lost—or perhaps it's the other way around.

All this is mere commentary; the texture of the text is better conveyed by a quotation. Picking one more or less at random among many that call out to be shared:

"Tamara, Russia, the wildwood grading into old gardens, my northern birches and firs, the sight of my mother getting down on her hands and knees to kiss the earth every time we came back to the country from town for the summer, et la montagne et le grand chêne--these are things that fate one day bundled up pell-mell and tossed into the sea, completely severing me from my boyhood. I wonder, however, whether there is really much to be said for more anesthetic destinies, for, let us say, a smooth, safe, small-town continuity of time, with its primitive absence of perspective, when, at fifty, one is still dwelling in the clapboard house of one's childhood, so that every time one cleans the attic one comes across the same pile of old brown schoolbooks, still together among later accumulations of dead objects, and where, on summery Sunday mornings, one's wife stops on the sidewalk to endure for a minute or two that terrible, garrulous, dyed, church-bound McGee woman, who, way back in 1915, used to be pretty, naughty Margaret Ann of the mint-flavored mouth and nimble fingers.

"The break in my own destiny affords me in retrospect a syncopal kick that I would not have missed for worlds."

It would require a writer more daring than I am to venture very much after that. One sees in miniature the folds of the magic carpet, and one realizes that here, geography and the clock have met their match.
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Jun 16, 2011

Tara Marsden rated it

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Shelves: summer2011

It goes without saying that this was a beautifully written book. Nabokov is infamous for his precise and elegant prose. Each word in each sentence feels like it was given special care in the choosing. But because of this, this relatively short book is not a quick read. It was never boring or tedious, but you can't skim or speed-read without missing much of the poetic nature of this book, and really, the poeticism is the book. There's no action or conflict. Nabokov breezes over epic events in his...more

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Apr 13, 2011

Matt added it · review of another edition

Absolutely yes. Grounded somewhat from the characteristics hijinx by the effort to make clear just how much he loved his childhood and his parents, Nabokov here lays bare what, it seems obvious now, is the filament in his work: the essentially child-like ability to wonder at and personify all of the objects which surround him. That he both does and does not want to rub it in how fantastic his family is also comes through. Nabokov is able to be so masterfully humble that it becomes--and he wants...more

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Jan 25, 2012

Taylor rated it

"The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with the utmost zest all my life…"

Nabokov expressing his love of performing the art of memory, which he does beautifully throughout this entire autobiography. In this book Nabokov irresistibly employs the gymnastics of memory of what is fact, and based in reality and what is more of a dreamy movie reel inside his own mind. Each of his memories flow into the next as though fading...more

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Dec 26, 2011

MetalPuff rated it

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Nabokov are o memorie formidabilă și este unul dintre puținii scriitori care mă determină să citesc descrieri. Descrieri de fluturi, de păduri, de tufe și cărări. La el fiecare cuvânt e însoțit de epitet, la fel cum fiecare literă are o culoare. Fascinantă descrierea sinesteziei de care se bucură în permanență –ce viață frumoasă: În grupul maron sunt: nuanța bogată, cauciucată a moalelui g, aceea mai palidă, a lui j și aceea de șireturi bej a lui h […] m este un pliseu de flanel roz… Uneori am i...moreNabokov are o memorie formidabilă și este unul dintre puținii scriitori care mă determină să citesc descrieri. Descrieri de fluturi, de păduri, de tufe și cărări. La el fiecare cuvânt e însoțit de epitet, la fel cum fiecare literă are o culoare. Fascinantă descrierea sinesteziei de care se bucură în permanență –ce viață frumoasă: În grupul maron sunt: nuanța bogată, cauciucată a moalelui g, aceea mai palidă, a lui j și aceea de șireturi bej a lui h […] m este un pliseu de flanel roz… Uneori am impresia că încearcă să se victimizeze oleacă în calitate de exilat, sună dureros ce-i drept. Dar nu pare să fi suferit prea mult. Familia făcea parte din mica nobilime, iar înainte să se împută treaba la ei acasă el și cu frate-său au fost expediați la Cambridge să pună burta pe carte. În afară de asasinarea lui Vladimir Nabokov tatăl- din greșeală – nu văd nimic care să-mi stoarcă lacrimi în biografia lui. O logodnă eșuată, o soție care îi închidea până și umbrela pentru că el nu era în stare, cel puțin o amantă…Și mulți fluturi. Dar asta nu are nicio importanță, pentru că nu e regulă să suferi ca un câne ca să scrii din fuflet… ridicolă expresie asta cu a scrie din suflet… În fine… Halal patrioată sunt, să nu disting durerea dintr-un exil confortabil.

O scenă excepțională la care am râs cu lacrimi: se întâlnește Nabokov cu laureatul Nobel Ivan Bunin, un moșneag care vroia să discute cu băiatul nostru pe teme scatologice (e-ul s-o fi făcut nevăzut dintr-o greșeală de tipar sau poate chiar scatologia era la modă printre scriitorii ruși), dar n-are succes. Îi zice ofticat că o să moară într-o suferință îngrozitoare și într-o izolare totală. Nabokov, băiat de comitet, vrea să-l ajute să-și pună raglanul dar moșul nu și nu, se descurcă. Pe stradă se luptă amândoi, Nabokov încercând să scape de Bunin care vroia să-l ajute el de data asta să se îmbrace, până când Bunin se schimbă la față și duce mâna la subraț. Scoate de acolo fularul lui Nabokov și trag amândoi de el ca niște magicieni retardați, desfășurându-l în mijlocul străzii.

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About Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery and had an interest in chess problems.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intricate wordplay and descriptiv...more

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Quotes from Speak, Memory

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness-in a landscape selected at random-is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern-to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.” — 133 people liked it

“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then - not in dreams - but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.” — 18 people liked it

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