Speak, Memory

Speak, Memory

First UK edition
Author Vladimir Nabokov
Language English
Genre autobiography
Publisher Victor Gollancz (1951 UK)

Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. The book includes individual short stories published between 1936 and 1951 to create the first edition in 1951. Nabokov's revised and extended edition appeared in 1966.

Scope

The book is dedicated to his wife, Vera, and covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg and at their country estate Vyra, near Siverskaya. The three remaining chapters recall his years at Cambridge and as part of the Russian émigré community in Berlin and Paris. Through memory Nabokov is able to possess the past.[1]

“ 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. ”
— Speak, Memory, the opening line

Nabokov published "Mademoiselle O", which became Chapter Five of the book, in French in 1936, and in English in the Atlantic Monthly in 1943, without indicating that it was non-fiction. Subsequent pieces of the autobiography were published as individual or collected stories, and each chapter can stand on its own. Andrew Field observed that while Nabokov evoked the past through “puppets of memory” (in the characterizations of his educators, Colette, or Tamara, for example), his intimate family life with Véra and Dmitri remained "untouched".[2] Field indicated that the chapter on butterflies is an interesting example how the author deploys the fictional with the factual. It recounts, for example, how his first butterfly escapes at Vyra, in Russia, and is "overtaken and captured" forty years later on a butterfly hunt in Colorado.

Publications

Nabokov inherited the Rozhdestveno mansion from his uncle in 1916

Nabokov writes in the text that he was dissuaded from titling the book Speak, Mnemosyne by his publisher, who feared that readers would not buy a "book whose title they could not pronounce". It was first published in a single volume in 1951 as Speak, Memory in the United Kingdom and as Conclusive Evidence in the United States. The Russian version was published in 1954 and called Drugie berega (Other Shores). An extended edition including several photographs was published in 1966 as Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. In 1999 Alfred A. Knopf issued a new edition with the addition of a previously unpublished section named "Chapter 16".[3]

There are variations between the individually published chapters, the two English versions, and the Russian version. Nabokov, having lost his belongings in 1917, wrote from memory, and explains that certain reported details needed corrections; thus the individual chapters as published in magazines and the book versions differ. Also, the memoirs were adjusted to either the English- or Russian- speaking audience. It has been proposed that the ever-shifting text of his autobiography suggests that "reality" cannot be "possessed" by the reader, the "esteemed visitor", but only by Nabokov himself.[2]

Nabokov had planned a sequel under the title Speak on, Memory or Speak, America. He wrote, however, a fictional autobiographic memoir of a double persona, Look at the Harlequins!, apparently being upset by a real biography published by Andrew Field.[4]

Chapters

The chapters were individually published as follows—in the New Yorker, unless otherwise indicated:

Comments

The book was instantly called a masterpiece by the literary world.[5] In 2011, Time Magazine listed the book among the 100 All-TIME non-fiction books indicating that its "impressionist approach deepens the sense of memories relived through prose that is gorgeous, rich and full".[6] Joseph Epstein lists Nabokov’s book among the few truly great autobiographies.[7] While he opines that it is odd that so great a writer a Nabokov has not been able to generate passion in his readers for his own greatest passion, chess and butterflies, he finds that the autobiography succeeds "at making a reasonable pass at understanding that greatest of all conundrums, its author’s own life".[7] Jonathan Yardley writes that the book is witty, funny and wise, "at heart it is … deeply humane and even old-fashioned", with an "astonishing prose".[8] He indicates that while any autobiography is "inherently an act of immodesty", the real subject is the development of the inner and outer self, an act that can plunge the subject into “the abyss of self”.[8]/ Richard Gilbert who finds the long genealogical histories tedious notes that Nabokov apparently bullied his younger brother and "doesn’t pretend guilt, he does not feel", nor is he asking for sympathy when his idyllic world is crushed by the Russian revolution.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Prospero's Progress". Time Magazine. March 30, 1999. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Field, Andrew. VN, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1977), ISBN 0-517-56113-1.
  3. ↑ "Speak, Memory. About this Book". Alfred A. Knopf. March 1999. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  4. ↑ Joseph Coates (September 22, 1991). "Nabokov in America. Concluding A Biography That Is As Precise And Inspired As Its Subject". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  5. 1 2 Richard Gilbert (September 14, 2010). "Review: Nabokov’s ‘Speak, Memory’". Word Press. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  6. ↑ Megan Gibson (August 17, 2011). "All-TIME 100 100 Nonfiction Books". Time Magazine. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  7. 1 2 Joseph Epstein (writer) (June 13, 2014). "Masterpiece: Nabokov Looks Back at Life Before 'Lolita'". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  8. 1 2 Jonathan Yardley (May 26, 2004). "Nabokov's Brightly Colored Wings of Memory". Washington Post. Retrieved August 25, 2015.

External links

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