Dec 11, 2009

Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited | Introduction

Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, a careful and uncompromising reworking of its 1951 incarnation, is widely embraced as one of the best memoirs of the twentieth century. Nabokov, highly praised for his English and Russian language stories, novels, and poetry, proves his skill and talent as a creative nonfiction writer with this work. In it, he achieves two major feats. First, the evocation of Nabokov’s happy childhood in a liberal aristocratic family during the last years of the Russian czar is made poignant by contrasting this childhood with his subsequent exile and the assassination of his father. Second, aesthetically, words, images, and memories take the writer and his readers on magical little voyages that transcend the limitations of ordinary time and its daily burdens.

Nabokov conceived of the basic structure for what eventually became Speak, Memory as early as 1936, and early versions of some chapters were published in magazines during the 1940s. With the help of his wife Véra, Nabokov completed the first book-length version that was published in the United States in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence. Because he was not so well known at that time, the memoir did not produce a major stir among the reading public. However, after his best-selling novel Lolita (1955) made him world famous, he and Véra had enough financial resources to move to Switzerland, where there was also ample time to revise and improve the autobiography. One of the more helpful additions is a detailed index. A 1966 edition of Speak, Memory underscores what a prankster Nabokov liked to be by including a fictitious review of his own work that was originally to be included with Conclusive Evidence. Such pranks and deliberate red herrings from an author who adored chess, elaborate puns, and artifice have provided biographers and literary critics with challenging puzzles.

Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited Summary

Chapters 1–5
In this section of Speak, Memory, Nabokov provides the atmosphere for his vision and remembrances of time, of space, and of his family and attachments. Like the French novelist Marcel Proust (1871–1922), he searches and wanders through lost time; also like Proust, he recovers pockets of personal lost time and presents images of a now gone era, of now altered spaces, and of long dead family members and acquaintances.

Nabokov tells the reader that he has often tried to transcend the limits of mortality by reaching back to a time before his birth. The closest he can come to doing so, he says, is childhood. He describes his childhood as one of unspoiled privilege, a happy one. The principal members of his family are introduced, its elder members aristocratic and educated, pampered with western luxuries. They are fond of speaking in French and English. His parents are liberal and support constitutional reform and a moderate political climate of tolerance, without the excesses of czarist control. Nabokov as self-remembered boy is allowed to roam the large family estates in St. Petersburg province. He is well educated and attended to by tutors and servants, and he is permitted to meet famous personages who are often friends of his parents or distant relatives. In chapter five, Nabokov renders a description of Mademoiselle, the French-speaking governess from Switzerland who leaves the strongest and most lasting impressions on him. This chapter provides lengthy details that help the reader, with a little imagination, vicariously experience the... » Complete Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited Summary