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丨乇賮 亘夭賳貙 禺丕胤乇賴
賵賱丕丿蹖賲蹖乇 賵賱丕丿蹖賲蹖乇賵蹖趩 賳丕亘賵讴賵賮貙 亘丕 賳丕賲 賲爻鬲毓丕乇 賵賱丕丿蹖賲蹖乇 爻蹖乇蹖賳貙 乇賲丕賳鈥屬嗁堐屫池� 卮丕毓乇貙 賲鬲乇噩賲貙 倬乇賵丕賳賴鈥屫促嗀ж� 賵 胤乇丕丨 賲爻丕卅賱 卮胤乇賳噩賽 賲鬲賵賱丿 乇賵爻蹖賴 亘賵丿. 芦丨乇賮 亘夭賳貙 禺丕胤乇賴禄貙 禺賵丿夭賳丿诏蹖鈥屬嗀з呝団€屰� 丕賵貙 讴賴 亘丕 诏匕卮鬲賽 亘蹖卮 丕夭 倬賳噩丕賴 爻丕賱 丕夭 丕賳鬲卮丕乇貙 賴賳賵夭 丿乇 氐丿乇 賮賴乇爻鬲 丌孬丕乇 睾蹖乇 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖賽 亘乇鬲乇 噩賴丕賳 賯乇丕乇 丿丕乇丿貙 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屰� 丿賻乇賴賲鈥屫嗃屫団€屰� 賳馗丕賲鈥屬呝庂嗀� 丕爻鬲 丕夭 禺丕胤乇丕鬲蹖 卮禺氐蹖 讴賴 诏爻鬲乇賴鈥屰� 噩睾乇丕賮蹖丕蹖蹖鈥屫ж� 丕夭 爻賳鈥屬矩必藏ㄙ堌壁� 鬲丕 爻賳賳賻夭賽乇 乇丕 丿乇亘乇賲蹖鈥屭屫必� 賵 亘丕 倬賻乇卮鈥屬囏й屰� 賲毓丿賵丿 亘賴 賮囟丕/夭賲丕賳蹖 噩賱賵鬲乇貙 爻蹖鈥屬堎囐佖� 爻丕賱 丕夭 夭賳丿诏蹖 丕賵貙 丕夭 丕賵鬲 郾酃郯鄢 鬲丕 賲賴 郾酃鄞郯貙 乇丕 倬賵卮卮 賲蹖鈥屫囏�.
噩賵夭賮 丕倬爻鬲丕蹖賳貙 賲賳鬲賯丿 賳丕賲鈥屫⒇促嗀й� 丕丿亘蹖貙 丿乇 爻鬲丕蹖卮 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫�: 芦賳賵卮鬲賳 禺賵丿夭賳丿诏蹖鈥屬嗀з呝団€屫р€屰� 賲賲鬲丕夭貙 丕賮夭賵賳 亘乇 賯乇蹖丨賴鈥屰� 丕丿亘蹖 讴賴 亘賴鈥屭┵堌簇促� 丿爻鬲鈥屰屫з佖嗃� 丕爻鬲貙 賳蹖丕夭賲賳丿 丨蹖丕鬲蹖 亘賴鈥屫柏ж� 噩匕丕亘 丕爻鬲 讴賴 趩賳丿丕賳 丿爻鬲鈥屰屫з佖嗃� 賳蹖爻鬲. 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳賽 亘禺鬲鈥屰屫ж� 丕賳诏卮鬲鈥屫促呚ж臂� 賴爻鬲賳丿 讴賴 賯丕丿乇鈥屫з嗀� 亘丕 鬲噩爻賲 丿賵亘丕乇賴鈥屰� 爻乇诏匕卮鬲鈥屬囏й屫簇з嗀� 賲囟丕賲蹖賳 賵 丕賱诏賵賴丕蹖蹖 亘蹖丕亘賳丿 讴賴 夭賳丿诏蹖 乇丕 趩賳丕賳讴賴 蹖讴 禺賵丿夭賳丿诏蹖鈥屬嗀з呝団€屰� 賲賵賮賯 賳蹖丕夭賲賳丿 丕爻鬲貙 卮乇丨 賵 亘爻胤 丿賴丿. 賵賱丕丿蹖賲蹖乇 賳丕亘賵讴賵賮 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲毓丿賵丿 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 丕爻鬲.禄
噩賵夭賮 丕倬爻鬲丕蹖賳貙 賲賳鬲賯丿 賳丕賲鈥屫⒇促嗀й� 丕丿亘蹖貙 丿乇 爻鬲丕蹖卮 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫�: 芦賳賵卮鬲賳 禺賵丿夭賳丿诏蹖鈥屬嗀з呝団€屫р€屰� 賲賲鬲丕夭貙 丕賮夭賵賳 亘乇 賯乇蹖丨賴鈥屰� 丕丿亘蹖 讴賴 亘賴鈥屭┵堌簇促� 丿爻鬲鈥屰屫з佖嗃� 丕爻鬲貙 賳蹖丕夭賲賳丿 丨蹖丕鬲蹖 亘賴鈥屫柏ж� 噩匕丕亘 丕爻鬲 讴賴 趩賳丿丕賳 丿爻鬲鈥屰屫з佖嗃� 賳蹖爻鬲. 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳賽 亘禺鬲鈥屰屫ж� 丕賳诏卮鬲鈥屫促呚ж臂� 賴爻鬲賳丿 讴賴 賯丕丿乇鈥屫з嗀� 亘丕 鬲噩爻賲 丿賵亘丕乇賴鈥屰� 爻乇诏匕卮鬲鈥屬囏й屫簇з嗀� 賲囟丕賲蹖賳 賵 丕賱诏賵賴丕蹖蹖 亘蹖丕亘賳丿 讴賴 夭賳丿诏蹖 乇丕 趩賳丕賳讴賴 蹖讴 禺賵丿夭賳丿诏蹖鈥屬嗀з呝団€屰� 賲賵賮賯 賳蹖丕夭賲賳丿 丕爻鬲貙 卮乇丨 賵 亘爻胤 丿賴丿. 賵賱丕丿蹖賲蹖乇 賳丕亘賵讴賵賮 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲毓丿賵丿 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 丕爻鬲.禄
334 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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36.4k people want to read
About the author
Vladimir Nabokov
827听books14.4k听followersRussian:
袙谢邪写懈屑懈褉 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁
.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. 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 a big 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 descriptive detail that characterized all his works.
Lolita was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels; Pale Fire (1962) was ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951), was listed eighth on the publisher's list of the 20th century's greatest nonfiction. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist. 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 a big 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 descriptive detail that characterized all his works.
Lolita was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels; Pale Fire (1962) was ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951), was listed eighth on the publisher's list of the 20th century's greatest nonfiction. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,266 reviews
March 31, 2012
Vladimir Nabokov was the Niles Crane of 20th-century literature: snooty, fastidious, and comically inept at being a normal guy. (And it鈥檚 part of his fastidiousness that he would have despised my handy, pop-culture analogy). Even his ailments had something snobbish about them. I mean, synesthesia? Who has that? And what kind of douche decides that sleep is too plebeian? Would it have been so hard to come down with herpes and depression like everyone else?
Needless to say, Speak, Memory is one of the most brilliant autobiographies ever written, and I鈥檓 just delaying the moment when I throw my panties on the stage along with every other reviewer here. But first I need to make fun of Nabokov a bit more. Six pages into his foreword, he tosses off this gag-inducing little metaphor:
I hope to write some day a 鈥淪peak on, Memory,鈥� covering the years 1940-1960 spent in America: the evaporation of certain volatiles and the melting of certain metals are still going on in my coils and crucibles.
That鈥檚 a fairly standard trope, I guess: the artist as alchemist. What irritates me about it is the self-complacency it implies: this is the uptown equivalent of hanging a 鈥淕enius at Work鈥� sign on your cubicle wall. It鈥檚 tacky, not to mention unbearably precious. Also, wasn鈥檛 alchemy discredited centuries ago as a bogus pseudo-science?
In one sense, though, the metaphor is well-chosen, because Nabokov really did view art as some kind of occult jiggery-pokery:
I discovered in nature the non-utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.
I dunno. It鈥檚 not that I expect every artist to justify the ways of God to man, or forge the conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul (blech), or help me free my mind so that my ass may follow, but that strikes me as a depressingly sterile notion of art. Games, magic, deception: it all sounds like an elaborate Easter egg hunt. Or a Dungeons & Dragons marathon. Either way, it鈥檚 something I grew out of a long time ago. And if you point out that Nabokov wrote Lolita, whereas I鈥檝e written a bunch of book reports for a stupid website, I won鈥檛 have much of a comeback for you. Except shut up.
I clearly have huge problems with some of the assumptions behind Speak, Memory, but the book itself is just so damn beautiful that I can鈥檛 stay mad at it for long. People talk about Nabokov鈥檚 style as if it were some glittering, rococo gush, but his elaborations are never merely ornamental: they鈥檙e in the service of an almost preposterous precision. He wants to get it exactly right, and if that means ransacking the OED and piling up his clauses into syntactical Jenga towers 鈥� well, you鈥檒l just have to sit there and take it. Or go play Wii. The fact is, the world is so immeasurably complex, and our perceptions are so deliriously rich that even the most exhaustive representation of one tiny patch of reality can only be a gross simplification 鈥� a thing of sticks and squiggles, daubed by a gifted chimpanzee. Nabokov鈥檚 prose is a bit less of a simplification than anyone else鈥檚, that鈥檚 all. Meaning, he comes as close to honouring the riotous profusion of experience as any human being is likely to get.
There. I told you the panties would come off.
Needless to say, Speak, Memory is one of the most brilliant autobiographies ever written, and I鈥檓 just delaying the moment when I throw my panties on the stage along with every other reviewer here. But first I need to make fun of Nabokov a bit more. Six pages into his foreword, he tosses off this gag-inducing little metaphor:
I hope to write some day a 鈥淪peak on, Memory,鈥� covering the years 1940-1960 spent in America: the evaporation of certain volatiles and the melting of certain metals are still going on in my coils and crucibles.
That鈥檚 a fairly standard trope, I guess: the artist as alchemist. What irritates me about it is the self-complacency it implies: this is the uptown equivalent of hanging a 鈥淕enius at Work鈥� sign on your cubicle wall. It鈥檚 tacky, not to mention unbearably precious. Also, wasn鈥檛 alchemy discredited centuries ago as a bogus pseudo-science?
In one sense, though, the metaphor is well-chosen, because Nabokov really did view art as some kind of occult jiggery-pokery:
I discovered in nature the non-utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.
I dunno. It鈥檚 not that I expect every artist to justify the ways of God to man, or forge the conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul (blech), or help me free my mind so that my ass may follow, but that strikes me as a depressingly sterile notion of art. Games, magic, deception: it all sounds like an elaborate Easter egg hunt. Or a Dungeons & Dragons marathon. Either way, it鈥檚 something I grew out of a long time ago. And if you point out that Nabokov wrote Lolita, whereas I鈥檝e written a bunch of book reports for a stupid website, I won鈥檛 have much of a comeback for you. Except shut up.
I clearly have huge problems with some of the assumptions behind Speak, Memory, but the book itself is just so damn beautiful that I can鈥檛 stay mad at it for long. People talk about Nabokov鈥檚 style as if it were some glittering, rococo gush, but his elaborations are never merely ornamental: they鈥檙e in the service of an almost preposterous precision. He wants to get it exactly right, and if that means ransacking the OED and piling up his clauses into syntactical Jenga towers 鈥� well, you鈥檒l just have to sit there and take it. Or go play Wii. The fact is, the world is so immeasurably complex, and our perceptions are so deliriously rich that even the most exhaustive representation of one tiny patch of reality can only be a gross simplification 鈥� a thing of sticks and squiggles, daubed by a gifted chimpanzee. Nabokov鈥檚 prose is a bit less of a simplification than anyone else鈥檚, that鈥檚 all. Meaning, he comes as close to honouring the riotous profusion of experience as any human being is likely to get.
There. I told you the panties would come off.
September 8, 2019
After reading a bit about how excellent and unusual this book is as an autobiography, I was surprised to find it more traditional than I expected --- still excellent, but traditional. It covers the first half of Nabokov鈥檚 life (1899-1977) until 1940, when at age 41 he moved the United States. Many of the chapters were published as short stories or memoirs in American magazines such as The New Yorker and the Atlantic.
The chapter about his nanny was published as 鈥淢ademoiselle O鈥� in the Atlantic in 1943. Another chapter is about his father and there is one about his uncle. His uncle left him a valuable Russian estate but when it was nationalized by the Russian government, as was his family home in St. Petersburg, Nabokov lost his inheritance except for some hidden jewels that his family smuggled out of the country. Did his mansion in St. Petersburg really have 50 servants?
There are chapters about puppy love 鈥� a girl he roller skated and ice skated with and then a more serious love and his first sexual experience when he was 17 and she was 16.
Nabokov talks about having synesthesia through 鈥渃olored hearing鈥� in associating colors with vowel sounds.
Nabokov had a younger brother who was killed in a concentration camp. This was not because he was Jewish, although the family had some minor, distant Jewish ancestry, but because his brother held a minor government position and spoke out against some German bureaucratic policy. He was then accused of being a spy.
In one chapter and in several other places he talks about his love 鈥� perhaps obsession 鈥� with butterfly collecting. He went far beyond amateur collecting by writing articles in scientific journals describing new species, having his specimens displayed in museum collections, and even having some species named after him. He also was a chess fanatic, even creating chess puzzles.
There is a very traditional chapter about his distant ancestors that can be skimmed --- mostly educators, government and military officials
There are chapters about his first attempts at writing poetry to please his mother and about his time at Cambridge. He writes about how, when he uses a real-life person as a model for someone he wrote about, he 鈥榣oses鈥� that person in his memory to the story!
All in all a good story and a good autobiography although it does not give us a lot of insight into Nabokov鈥檚 writing since many of his most famous works were published after this book ends (1940) such as Lolita 1955 and Pale Fire 1962.
Photo of the Nabokov family home is St. Petersburg from
Photo of the author from
The chapter about his nanny was published as 鈥淢ademoiselle O鈥� in the Atlantic in 1943. Another chapter is about his father and there is one about his uncle. His uncle left him a valuable Russian estate but when it was nationalized by the Russian government, as was his family home in St. Petersburg, Nabokov lost his inheritance except for some hidden jewels that his family smuggled out of the country. Did his mansion in St. Petersburg really have 50 servants?
There are chapters about puppy love 鈥� a girl he roller skated and ice skated with and then a more serious love and his first sexual experience when he was 17 and she was 16.
Nabokov talks about having synesthesia through 鈥渃olored hearing鈥� in associating colors with vowel sounds.
Nabokov had a younger brother who was killed in a concentration camp. This was not because he was Jewish, although the family had some minor, distant Jewish ancestry, but because his brother held a minor government position and spoke out against some German bureaucratic policy. He was then accused of being a spy.
In one chapter and in several other places he talks about his love 鈥� perhaps obsession 鈥� with butterfly collecting. He went far beyond amateur collecting by writing articles in scientific journals describing new species, having his specimens displayed in museum collections, and even having some species named after him. He also was a chess fanatic, even creating chess puzzles.
There is a very traditional chapter about his distant ancestors that can be skimmed --- mostly educators, government and military officials
There are chapters about his first attempts at writing poetry to please his mother and about his time at Cambridge. He writes about how, when he uses a real-life person as a model for someone he wrote about, he 鈥榣oses鈥� that person in his memory to the story!
All in all a good story and a good autobiography although it does not give us a lot of insight into Nabokov鈥檚 writing since many of his most famous works were published after this book ends (1940) such as Lolita 1955 and Pale Fire 1962.
Photo of the Nabokov family home is St. Petersburg from
Photo of the author from
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April 19, 2023Nabokov is a joker.
If I hadn鈥檛 known that already, I鈥檇 have learned it when I reached the end of .
I鈥檇 begun my review of the book when I was about half way through reading it, something I often do, preferring to jot down thoughts and impressions as I read in case I've forgotten the significance of this or that point by the time I've reached the end. Very soon I have a couple of readymade paragraphs and only need to tidy them up here and there, add a suitable opening and closing line, and voil脿鈥攖he review has written itself.
So, imagine my surprise yesterday when I got to the end of and glanced at the Appendix. What have we here, I wondered鈥攆or about half a minute. I soon figured out that the Appendix is a 'review' of , supposedly written by someone other than Nabokov! And what's more, many of the points this 鈥榦ther鈥� person makes, in a slightly boring and pedestrian voice compared to the eloquence of the rest of the book, are points I鈥檇 already noted in my provisional review鈥攑lus in some of the other Nabokov reviews I鈥檝e written in the last couple of weeks. Whoosh! All the wind has gone from my sails and an unsettled feeling of having been set up is creeping in.
And then today I read this line in which I've just begun: one hears the flippantly flat little voice of the reviewer (perhaps even of the female sex)... I look around to see if the ghost of Nabokov isn't sniggering at me from a Novemberdim corner of the room, saying, This one鈥檚 for Kinbote! (well, it is true that I was hard on Kinbote in my review of )
The result of all this is that I no longer feel like commenting on the carefully chosen themes in this memoir, nor do I feel like pointing out the nice balance between the personal and the general, the planned and the accidental, in the teasing out of those memories. And I do not want to talk about the many interesting references to poetry and parks, chess and fate, art and nature, which fill the pages of . I had a section on the various heteronyms Nabokov uses throughout his work but that too is now obsolete, as are the thoughts about his brother Sergey, and the strong and unsettling resemblance between Sergey and the nameless narrator of .
No, there鈥檚 no need for any of that now as it鈥檚 all been analysed in the Appendix, and in a far more erudite and pompous manner than I could ever manage. Nabokov has checkmated me nicely...
But I'll get my own back soon.
edit: 25th November: On page 196 of , a character accuses the narrator, Godunov (who resembles Nabokov more than a little), of being...a joker!
Let me tell you, my lad, you're quite a joker...
If I hadn鈥檛 known that already, I鈥檇 have learned it when I reached the end of .
I鈥檇 begun my review of the book when I was about half way through reading it, something I often do, preferring to jot down thoughts and impressions as I read in case I've forgotten the significance of this or that point by the time I've reached the end. Very soon I have a couple of readymade paragraphs and only need to tidy them up here and there, add a suitable opening and closing line, and voil脿鈥攖he review has written itself.
So, imagine my surprise yesterday when I got to the end of and glanced at the Appendix. What have we here, I wondered鈥攆or about half a minute. I soon figured out that the Appendix is a 'review' of , supposedly written by someone other than Nabokov! And what's more, many of the points this 鈥榦ther鈥� person makes, in a slightly boring and pedestrian voice compared to the eloquence of the rest of the book, are points I鈥檇 already noted in my provisional review鈥攑lus in some of the other Nabokov reviews I鈥檝e written in the last couple of weeks. Whoosh! All the wind has gone from my sails and an unsettled feeling of having been set up is creeping in.
And then today I read this line in which I've just begun: one hears the flippantly flat little voice of the reviewer (perhaps even of the female sex)... I look around to see if the ghost of Nabokov isn't sniggering at me from a Novemberdim corner of the room, saying, This one鈥檚 for Kinbote! (well, it is true that I was hard on Kinbote in my review of )
The result of all this is that I no longer feel like commenting on the carefully chosen themes in this memoir, nor do I feel like pointing out the nice balance between the personal and the general, the planned and the accidental, in the teasing out of those memories. And I do not want to talk about the many interesting references to poetry and parks, chess and fate, art and nature, which fill the pages of . I had a section on the various heteronyms Nabokov uses throughout his work but that too is now obsolete, as are the thoughts about his brother Sergey, and the strong and unsettling resemblance between Sergey and the nameless narrator of .
No, there鈥檚 no need for any of that now as it鈥檚 all been analysed in the Appendix, and in a far more erudite and pompous manner than I could ever manage. Nabokov has checkmated me nicely...
But I'll get my own back soon.
edit: 25th November: On page 196 of , a character accuses the narrator, Godunov (who resembles Nabokov more than a little), of being...a joker!
Let me tell you, my lad, you're quite a joker...
January 19, 2025
Memoirs are like beaches. Best enjoyed with shoes off. How much more we shed depends on the skies and our bravery if the waves are big.
Childhood memoirs are no exception. They drop us on that beach. They call us to build castles or run like Piggy in Lord of the Flies. Their creators dive like planes about to crash and take us there.
I kiss Nabokov's hands. This is a beach I never wanted to leave.
It shimmers with memories pearly as sea shells. One I'll pocket forever is of villagers tossing his father into the air after he solves a dispute which calls him from dinner.
"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 white 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 might 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 . . . "
Nabokov skims over losses are like water. His hand is deft as if his pen were a slim stone. It isn't that he is not bothered. He simply refuses to be defined by loss. The beach, he is saying, is bigger than any one of us.
Childhood memoirs are no exception. They drop us on that beach. They call us to build castles or run like Piggy in Lord of the Flies. Their creators dive like planes about to crash and take us there.
I kiss Nabokov's hands. This is a beach I never wanted to leave.
It shimmers with memories pearly as sea shells. One I'll pocket forever is of villagers tossing his father into the air after he solves a dispute which calls him from dinner.
"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 white 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 might 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 . . . "
Nabokov skims over losses are like water. His hand is deft as if his pen were a slim stone. It isn't that he is not bothered. He simply refuses to be defined by loss. The beach, he is saying, is bigger than any one of us.
July 29, 2022
LA PAROLA ALLA MEMORIA
Nabokov e sua moglie Vera con uno degli strumenti pi霉 preziosi per lo scrittore, il rettino acchiappa-farfalle, che lo ha accompagnato per tutta la vita.
Richiamare alla mente con immediatezza frammenti del passato 猫 un鈥檃zione che mi sembra di aver continuato a compiere con il massimo piacere durante tutta la mia vita, e ho motivo di ritenere che questo affinamento quasi patologico della facolt脿 retrospettiva sia un tratto ereditario.
Dopo aver dedicato le prime dieci pagine, quelle della prefazione, a mettere ordine e puntualizzare e voler convincere il lettore che sta per leggere una autobiografia accurata e veritiera in fatto di accadimenti, che a parlare, come indicato dal titolo, 猫 l鈥檃utorevole Ricordo, Nabokov, pur convinto che lui riveda, ergo ricordi, con una nitidezza non offuscata da sovrapposizioni successive, sgombra presto il campo da patenti di autenticit脿 e veridicit脿, e passa a raccontare la presa precaria della memoria che tutto plasma e trasfigura, colora e ricostruisce.
Ma, attenzione鈥�
La casa di Nabokov in via Morskaya 47 a San Pietroburgo. Credo che la sua stanza fosse quella sopra il bovindo.
Nabokov va a zonzo nel suo passato annotando date precise fin quasi all鈥檕ra del giorno, ma non rispetta le cronologie, salta avanti e indietro nel tempo perfettamente a suo agio e totalmente incurante dell鈥檈ventuale fatica del lettore a seguirlo.
I ricordi spesso sembrano affiorare a brandelli: ma con alcuni man mano si costruisce un quadro pressoch茅 completo, che mette insieme un fatto o accadimento con il corredo di colori, luce, odori, suoni, sensazioni tattili, e certo, ovvio, sentimenti ed emozioni.
Il mio preferito 猫 quello serale dell鈥檈poca fino ai suoi 7/8 anni: la mamma lo accompagna a letto spingendolo dolcemente con una pressione sulle reni, su per il grande scalone, e il bambino oppone resistenza per prolungare quel contatto e ritardare la separazione, ma non cos矛 tanta resistenza da non procedere avanti o da stancare la madre.
Faccio fatica a credere che simile meraviglia 鈥� e le altre sue numerose meraviglie pubblicate 鈥� provengano da un uomo che nell鈥檈ssenza 猫 stato prima di tutto un collezionista di farfalle (猫 cos矛 che avr脿 vinto il cuore di sua moglie Vera, con la frase pi霉 trita, vieni, voglio mostrarti la mia collezione di farfalle?), uno che di s茅, senza imbarazzo e senza vergogna, scriveva:
il desiderio di averla per me, quella creatura, fu tra i pi霉 intensi che io abbia mai provato.
Dove la creatura era per l鈥檃ppunto un macaone.
Ma, d鈥檃ltra parte, non posso non riconciliarmi con la sua morbosa passione per i lepidotteri quando poco pi霉 avanti scrive:
Ho scoperto in natura i piaceri non utilitaristici che ceravo nell鈥檃rte. erano entrambe una forma di magia, entrambe un gioco intricato di sortilegio e illusione.
VN era figlio di un ricco nobile, giurista, editore di giornali e liberale politico che fu imprigionato in isolamento per aver incitato alla rivoluzione contro lo zar. Trascorse l'infanzia a San Pietroburgo o nella tenuta di campagna di famiglia, che aveva un personale permanente di circa cinquanta domestici. Fu educato da una serie di eccentriche governanti inglesi e francesi e svizzere, e da tutori russi. Fu spesso portato in Germania, Francia e Italia. Impar貌 a leggere e scrivere in inglese prima di padroneggiare il russo.
Queste memorie sono dedicate a sua moglie Vera alla quale spesso si rivolge direttamente in cerca di conferma a un ricordo comune.
Io testimonio con soddisfazione la suprema conquista della memoria, che consiste nell鈥檜so magistrale di armonie innate allorch茅 raccoglie tra le sue pieghe le tonalit脿 sospese ed errabonde del passato.
脠 un mare di felicit脿 che abbracci l鈥檌nfanzia e l鈥檃dolescenza. Interrotto dalla rivoluzione bolscevica che spinge i Nabokov ad abbandonare la madre patria Russia (credo che l鈥檈spressione 鈥渕adre patria鈥� non sia mai stata pi霉 calzante, Vladimir si stringe in un abbraccio, peraltro ricambiato, con la sua terra russa).
E se noi mortali pi霉 andiamo avanti con gli anni e pi霉 sembriamo dimenticare, faticare a ricordare, VN sessantenne dimostra una fantastica capacit脿 di viaggiare a ritroso nel tempo senza trascurare dettagli intimi, atmosfere emotive e impressioni visive, sfoggiando sottigliezza e sensibilit脿, tenera nostalgia e occasionali guizzi di ironia sempre dispiegata con stile e signorilit脿. Le sue emozioni passate, rievocate con tranquillit脿, e le sue emozioni presenti, ispirate dal ricordo delle sue emozioni passate, soffondono le sue pagine di una luce morbida. Il mondo armonioso di un'infanzia perfetta.
Nabokov e sua moglie Vera con uno degli strumenti pi霉 preziosi per lo scrittore, il rettino acchiappa-farfalle, che lo ha accompagnato per tutta la vita.
Richiamare alla mente con immediatezza frammenti del passato 猫 un鈥檃zione che mi sembra di aver continuato a compiere con il massimo piacere durante tutta la mia vita, e ho motivo di ritenere che questo affinamento quasi patologico della facolt脿 retrospettiva sia un tratto ereditario.
Dopo aver dedicato le prime dieci pagine, quelle della prefazione, a mettere ordine e puntualizzare e voler convincere il lettore che sta per leggere una autobiografia accurata e veritiera in fatto di accadimenti, che a parlare, come indicato dal titolo, 猫 l鈥檃utorevole Ricordo, Nabokov, pur convinto che lui riveda, ergo ricordi, con una nitidezza non offuscata da sovrapposizioni successive, sgombra presto il campo da patenti di autenticit脿 e veridicit脿, e passa a raccontare la presa precaria della memoria che tutto plasma e trasfigura, colora e ricostruisce.
Ma, attenzione鈥�
La casa di Nabokov in via Morskaya 47 a San Pietroburgo. Credo che la sua stanza fosse quella sopra il bovindo.
Nabokov va a zonzo nel suo passato annotando date precise fin quasi all鈥檕ra del giorno, ma non rispetta le cronologie, salta avanti e indietro nel tempo perfettamente a suo agio e totalmente incurante dell鈥檈ventuale fatica del lettore a seguirlo.
I ricordi spesso sembrano affiorare a brandelli: ma con alcuni man mano si costruisce un quadro pressoch茅 completo, che mette insieme un fatto o accadimento con il corredo di colori, luce, odori, suoni, sensazioni tattili, e certo, ovvio, sentimenti ed emozioni.
Il mio preferito 猫 quello serale dell鈥檈poca fino ai suoi 7/8 anni: la mamma lo accompagna a letto spingendolo dolcemente con una pressione sulle reni, su per il grande scalone, e il bambino oppone resistenza per prolungare quel contatto e ritardare la separazione, ma non cos矛 tanta resistenza da non procedere avanti o da stancare la madre.
Faccio fatica a credere che simile meraviglia 鈥� e le altre sue numerose meraviglie pubblicate 鈥� provengano da un uomo che nell鈥檈ssenza 猫 stato prima di tutto un collezionista di farfalle (猫 cos矛 che avr脿 vinto il cuore di sua moglie Vera, con la frase pi霉 trita, vieni, voglio mostrarti la mia collezione di farfalle?), uno che di s茅, senza imbarazzo e senza vergogna, scriveva:
il desiderio di averla per me, quella creatura, fu tra i pi霉 intensi che io abbia mai provato.
Dove la creatura era per l鈥檃ppunto un macaone.
Ma, d鈥檃ltra parte, non posso non riconciliarmi con la sua morbosa passione per i lepidotteri quando poco pi霉 avanti scrive:
Ho scoperto in natura i piaceri non utilitaristici che ceravo nell鈥檃rte. erano entrambe una forma di magia, entrambe un gioco intricato di sortilegio e illusione.
VN era figlio di un ricco nobile, giurista, editore di giornali e liberale politico che fu imprigionato in isolamento per aver incitato alla rivoluzione contro lo zar. Trascorse l'infanzia a San Pietroburgo o nella tenuta di campagna di famiglia, che aveva un personale permanente di circa cinquanta domestici. Fu educato da una serie di eccentriche governanti inglesi e francesi e svizzere, e da tutori russi. Fu spesso portato in Germania, Francia e Italia. Impar貌 a leggere e scrivere in inglese prima di padroneggiare il russo.
Queste memorie sono dedicate a sua moglie Vera alla quale spesso si rivolge direttamente in cerca di conferma a un ricordo comune.
Io testimonio con soddisfazione la suprema conquista della memoria, che consiste nell鈥檜so magistrale di armonie innate allorch茅 raccoglie tra le sue pieghe le tonalit脿 sospese ed errabonde del passato.
脠 un mare di felicit脿 che abbracci l鈥檌nfanzia e l鈥檃dolescenza. Interrotto dalla rivoluzione bolscevica che spinge i Nabokov ad abbandonare la madre patria Russia (credo che l鈥檈spressione 鈥渕adre patria鈥� non sia mai stata pi霉 calzante, Vladimir si stringe in un abbraccio, peraltro ricambiato, con la sua terra russa).
E se noi mortali pi霉 andiamo avanti con gli anni e pi霉 sembriamo dimenticare, faticare a ricordare, VN sessantenne dimostra una fantastica capacit脿 di viaggiare a ritroso nel tempo senza trascurare dettagli intimi, atmosfere emotive e impressioni visive, sfoggiando sottigliezza e sensibilit脿, tenera nostalgia e occasionali guizzi di ironia sempre dispiegata con stile e signorilit脿. Le sue emozioni passate, rievocate con tranquillit脿, e le sue emozioni presenti, ispirate dal ricordo delle sue emozioni passate, soffondono le sue pagine di una luce morbida. Il mondo armonioso di un'infanzia perfetta.
April 27, 2019
I never knew this guy had synesthesia...
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between. Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much. (c)
Q:
AS FAR back as I remember myself (with interest, with amusement, seldom with admiration or disgust), I have been subject to mild hallucinations. Some are aural, others are optical, and by none have I profited much. The fatidic accents that restrained Socrates or egged on Joaneta Darc have degenerated with me to the level of something one happens to hear between lifting and clapping down the receiver of a busy party-line telephone. Just before falling asleep, I often become aware of a kind of one-sided conversation going on in an adjacent section of my mind, quite independently from the actual trend of my thoughts. It is a neutral, detached, anonymous voice, which I catch saying words of no importance to me whatever鈥攁n English or a Russian sentence, not even addressed to me, and so trivial that I hardly dare give samples, lest the flatness I wish to convey be marred by a molehill of sense. This silly phenomenon seems to be the auditory counterpart of certain praedormitary visions, which I also know well. What I mean is not the bright mental image (as, for instance, the face of a beloved parent long dead) conjured up by a wing-stroke of the will; that is one of the bravest movements a human spirit can make. Nor am I alluding to the so-called muscae volitantes鈥攕hadows cast upon the retinal rods by motes in the vitreous humor, which are seen as transparent threads drifting across the visual field. Perhaps nearer to the hypnagogic mirages I am thinking of is the colored spot, the stab of an afterimage, with which the lamp one has just turned off wounds the palpebral night. ...
At times, however, my photisms take on a rather soothing flou quality, and then I see鈥攑rojected, as it were, upon the inside of the eyelid鈥攇ray figures walking between beehives, or small black parrots gradually vanishing among mountain snows, or a mauve remoteness melting beyond moving masts. (c)
Q:
On top of all this I present a fine case of colored hearing. Perhaps 鈥渉earing鈥� is not quite accurate, since the color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The long a of the English alphabet (and it is this alphabet I have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal n, noodle-limp l, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of o take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French on which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, 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. Adjacent tints do not merge, and diphthongs do not have special colors of their own, unless represented by a single character in some other language (thus the fluffy-gray, three-stemmed Russian letter that stands for sh, a letter as old as the rushes of the Nile, influences its English representation).
I hasten to complete my list before I am interrupted. In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t. Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for w. The yellows comprise various e鈥檚 and i鈥檚, creamy d, bright-golden y, and u, whose alphabetical value I can express only by 鈥渂rassy with an olive sheen.鈥� In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h. Finally, among the reds, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with 鈥淩ose Quartz鈥� in Maerz and Paul鈥檚 Dictionary of Color. The word for rainbow, a primary, but decidedly muddy, rainbow, is in my private language the hardly pronounceable: kzspygv. The first author to discuss audition color茅e was, as far as I know, an albino physician in 1812, in Erlangen.
The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are. To my mother, though, this all seemed quite normal. The matter came up, one day in my seventh year, as I was using a heap of old alphabet blocks to build a tower. I casually remarked to her that their colors were all wrong. We discovered then that some of her letters had the same tint as mine and that, besides, she was optically affected by musical notes. These evoked no chromatisms in me whatsoever. Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. (c)
Q:
One day, after a long illness, as I lay in bed still very weak, I found myself basking in an unusual euphoria of lightness and repose. I knew my mother had gone to buy me the daily present that made those convalescences so delightful. (c)
Q:
Q:
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. (c)
Q:
Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between. Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much. (c)
Q:
AS FAR back as I remember myself (with interest, with amusement, seldom with admiration or disgust), I have been subject to mild hallucinations. Some are aural, others are optical, and by none have I profited much. The fatidic accents that restrained Socrates or egged on Joaneta Darc have degenerated with me to the level of something one happens to hear between lifting and clapping down the receiver of a busy party-line telephone. Just before falling asleep, I often become aware of a kind of one-sided conversation going on in an adjacent section of my mind, quite independently from the actual trend of my thoughts. It is a neutral, detached, anonymous voice, which I catch saying words of no importance to me whatever鈥攁n English or a Russian sentence, not even addressed to me, and so trivial that I hardly dare give samples, lest the flatness I wish to convey be marred by a molehill of sense. This silly phenomenon seems to be the auditory counterpart of certain praedormitary visions, which I also know well. What I mean is not the bright mental image (as, for instance, the face of a beloved parent long dead) conjured up by a wing-stroke of the will; that is one of the bravest movements a human spirit can make. Nor am I alluding to the so-called muscae volitantes鈥攕hadows cast upon the retinal rods by motes in the vitreous humor, which are seen as transparent threads drifting across the visual field. Perhaps nearer to the hypnagogic mirages I am thinking of is the colored spot, the stab of an afterimage, with which the lamp one has just turned off wounds the palpebral night. ...
At times, however, my photisms take on a rather soothing flou quality, and then I see鈥攑rojected, as it were, upon the inside of the eyelid鈥攇ray figures walking between beehives, or small black parrots gradually vanishing among mountain snows, or a mauve remoteness melting beyond moving masts. (c)
Q:
On top of all this I present a fine case of colored hearing. Perhaps 鈥渉earing鈥� is not quite accurate, since the color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The long a of the English alphabet (and it is this alphabet I have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal n, noodle-limp l, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of o take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French on which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, 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. Adjacent tints do not merge, and diphthongs do not have special colors of their own, unless represented by a single character in some other language (thus the fluffy-gray, three-stemmed Russian letter that stands for sh, a letter as old as the rushes of the Nile, influences its English representation).
I hasten to complete my list before I am interrupted. In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t. Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for w. The yellows comprise various e鈥檚 and i鈥檚, creamy d, bright-golden y, and u, whose alphabetical value I can express only by 鈥渂rassy with an olive sheen.鈥� In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h. Finally, among the reds, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with 鈥淩ose Quartz鈥� in Maerz and Paul鈥檚 Dictionary of Color. The word for rainbow, a primary, but decidedly muddy, rainbow, is in my private language the hardly pronounceable: kzspygv. The first author to discuss audition color茅e was, as far as I know, an albino physician in 1812, in Erlangen.
The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are. To my mother, though, this all seemed quite normal. The matter came up, one day in my seventh year, as I was using a heap of old alphabet blocks to build a tower. I casually remarked to her that their colors were all wrong. We discovered then that some of her letters had the same tint as mine and that, besides, she was optically affected by musical notes. These evoked no chromatisms in me whatsoever. Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. (c)
Q:
One day, after a long illness, as I lay in bed still very weak, I found myself basking in an unusual euphoria of lightness and repose. I knew my mother had gone to buy me the daily present that made those convalescences so delightful. (c)
Q:
September 26, 2020
鈥淢y old (since 1917) quarrel with the Soviet dictatorship is wholly unrelated to any question of property. My contempt for the 茅migr茅 who 鈥榟ates the Reds鈥� because they 鈥榮tole鈥� his money and land is complete. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.鈥�
And that is what this collage of memories is all about. It is not a conventional autobiography. It doesn't present a chronological account of Nabokov's life, nor does it analyse his literary works. In fact there is hardly anything about his novels in this work.* However, there are many memories of a lost childhood.
Typically something he sees triggers a memory, and that in turn may lead to other memories. He states that music doesn't appeal to him much: 鈥淢usic, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.鈥�, but what he lacks aurally he more than makes up for visually and he is gifted with synesthesia. 鈥淢y mother did everything to encourage the general sensitiveness I had to visual stimulation.鈥� She taught him to appreciate the beauty of nature: "鈥榁ot zapomni [now remember],鈥� she would say in conspiratorial tones as she drew my attention to this or that loved thing in Vyra 鈥� a lark ascending the curds-and-whey sky of a dull spring day, heat lightning taking pictures of a distant line of trees in the night, the palette of maple leaves on brown sand, a small bird鈥檚 cuneate footprints on new snow.鈥� 鈥淭hus, in a way, I inherited an exquisite simulacrum 鈥� the beauty of intangible property, unreal estate 鈥� and this proved a splendid training for the endurance of later losses.鈥�
Nostalgically he tells of mushroom gathering, a popular Russian pastime and he remembers the sight and smells: 鈥淚ts shady recesses would then harbor that special boletic reek which makes a Russian鈥檚 nostrils dilate 鈥� a dark, dank, satisfying blend of damp moss, rich earth, rotting leaves.鈥�
Nabokov provides an excellent snapshot of how the Russian aristocracy lived at the start of the twentieth century. He casually mentions that there were 50 servants on their country estate. He speaks with much fondness of some nannies and tutors (of whom he had many) and with contempt of others. There was the joy of learning to read: 鈥淚 was thrilled by the thought that some day I might attain such proficiency. The magic has endured, and whenever a grammar book comes my way, I instantly turn to the last page to enjoy a forbidden glimpse of the laborious student鈥檚 future, of that promised land where, at last, words are meant to mean what they mean.鈥�
Nabokov remembers: 鈥淭he sepia gloom of an arctic afternoon in midwinter invaded the rooms and was deepening to an oppressive black. A bronze angle, a surface of glass or polished mahogany here and there in the darkness, reflected the odds and ends of light from the street, where the globes of tall street lamps along its middle line were already diffusing their lunar glow. Gauzy shadows moved on the ceiling. In the stillness, the dry sound of a chrysanthemum petal falling upon the marble of a table made one鈥檚 nerves twang.鈥�
Nabokov, an enthusiastic lepidopterist, talks about butterflies - a lot and enthusiastically! He remembers his first romance and his first attempt at writing poetry. He also discusses time spent composing chess problems. There are memories of his brothers, and of his university years in England at Cambridge. He is amazed at the 鈥溾€� astonishing drivel when Russia was being discussed鈥� by otherwise intelligent fellow students. He tells us about his father who was assassinated in Berlin. He writes about exile and being an 茅migr茅.
And..
鈥淚 have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist."
"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."
"I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past."
"Very lovely, very lonesome. But what am I doing in this stereoscopic dreamland? How did I get here? Somehow, the two sleighs have slipped away, leaving behind a passportless spy standing on the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat. The vibration in my ears is no longer their receding bells, but only my old blood singing. All is still, spellbound, enthralled by the moon, fancy鈥檚 rear-vision mirror. The snow is real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful, sixty years crumble to glittering frost-dust between my fingers.鈥�
#
*Nabokov initially used the pseudonym 鈥沦颈谤颈苍鈥� and he wittily references himself here:
#
I loved this book. Nabokov wrote this memoir in English and later translated it into Russian. The writing is exquisite and his English is admirable. My vocabulary is richer for having read this lovely memoir.
#
A large number of extracts here, but Nabokov says it more eloquently than I ever can.
And that is what this collage of memories is all about. It is not a conventional autobiography. It doesn't present a chronological account of Nabokov's life, nor does it analyse his literary works. In fact there is hardly anything about his novels in this work.* However, there are many memories of a lost childhood.
Typically something he sees triggers a memory, and that in turn may lead to other memories. He states that music doesn't appeal to him much: 鈥淢usic, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.鈥�, but what he lacks aurally he more than makes up for visually and he is gifted with synesthesia. 鈥淢y mother did everything to encourage the general sensitiveness I had to visual stimulation.鈥� She taught him to appreciate the beauty of nature: "鈥榁ot zapomni [now remember],鈥� she would say in conspiratorial tones as she drew my attention to this or that loved thing in Vyra 鈥� a lark ascending the curds-and-whey sky of a dull spring day, heat lightning taking pictures of a distant line of trees in the night, the palette of maple leaves on brown sand, a small bird鈥檚 cuneate footprints on new snow.鈥� 鈥淭hus, in a way, I inherited an exquisite simulacrum 鈥� the beauty of intangible property, unreal estate 鈥� and this proved a splendid training for the endurance of later losses.鈥�
Nostalgically he tells of mushroom gathering, a popular Russian pastime and he remembers the sight and smells: 鈥淚ts shady recesses would then harbor that special boletic reek which makes a Russian鈥檚 nostrils dilate 鈥� a dark, dank, satisfying blend of damp moss, rich earth, rotting leaves.鈥�
Nabokov provides an excellent snapshot of how the Russian aristocracy lived at the start of the twentieth century. He casually mentions that there were 50 servants on their country estate. He speaks with much fondness of some nannies and tutors (of whom he had many) and with contempt of others. There was the joy of learning to read: 鈥淚 was thrilled by the thought that some day I might attain such proficiency. The magic has endured, and whenever a grammar book comes my way, I instantly turn to the last page to enjoy a forbidden glimpse of the laborious student鈥檚 future, of that promised land where, at last, words are meant to mean what they mean.鈥�
Nabokov remembers: 鈥淭he sepia gloom of an arctic afternoon in midwinter invaded the rooms and was deepening to an oppressive black. A bronze angle, a surface of glass or polished mahogany here and there in the darkness, reflected the odds and ends of light from the street, where the globes of tall street lamps along its middle line were already diffusing their lunar glow. Gauzy shadows moved on the ceiling. In the stillness, the dry sound of a chrysanthemum petal falling upon the marble of a table made one鈥檚 nerves twang.鈥�
Nabokov, an enthusiastic lepidopterist, talks about butterflies - a lot and enthusiastically! He remembers his first romance and his first attempt at writing poetry. He also discusses time spent composing chess problems. There are memories of his brothers, and of his university years in England at Cambridge. He is amazed at the 鈥溾€� astonishing drivel when Russia was being discussed鈥� by otherwise intelligent fellow students. He tells us about his father who was assassinated in Berlin. He writes about exile and being an 茅migr茅.
And..
鈥淚 have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist."
"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."
"I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past."
"Very lovely, very lonesome. But what am I doing in this stereoscopic dreamland? How did I get here? Somehow, the two sleighs have slipped away, leaving behind a passportless spy standing on the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat. The vibration in my ears is no longer their receding bells, but only my old blood singing. All is still, spellbound, enthralled by the moon, fancy鈥檚 rear-vision mirror. The snow is real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful, sixty years crumble to glittering frost-dust between my fingers.鈥�
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*Nabokov initially used the pseudonym 鈥沦颈谤颈苍鈥� and he wittily references himself here:
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I loved this book. Nabokov wrote this memoir in English and later translated it into Russian. The writing is exquisite and his English is admirable. My vocabulary is richer for having read this lovely memoir.
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A large number of extracts here, but Nabokov says it more eloquently than I ever can.
October 29, 2020
To me, this was always the Nabokov book. An old hardback of Speak Memory was on one of the bookcases at home when I was growing up, probably in the study - on a shelf low enough, as a small child, to become as familiar with the spine's unmistakable heavy block capitals, for them to seem as permanent an installation as any item of furniture that was older than I was.
Lolita belonged to a later, outside world, of cult books and lists of modern classics that became increasingly familiar through my teens. I somehow felt as if it were by another author altogether. Lolita wasn't the sort of book that would have been in the house. This early instinct about the difference between the two books as worlds was borne out in the reading far more than I, middle aged and, finally, about to start Speak Memory, had figured it would be.
Several years after having read Lolita, and familiar with blurbs and reviews of other Nabokov books, there were things I expected from his work: intellectual, creepy, detached; makes one more aware of unpleasant sides of oneself. Beautifully written, which in combination with the subject matter, messes with my head in a way that is not fun and not welcome. Anything but comfortable.
(The apotheosis of that mind-twisting beautiful/horrific combination, for me, has to be visual though, and it's why I never managed to watch more than three or four episodes of Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal.)
I never expected something that, when I asked myself how I'd describe Speak Memory to someone who only knew of Nabokov because of Lolita, and was a bit uncomfortable with him because of that, brought to mind Downton Abbey. How else to communicate to the average Anglo reader this magical mingling of cosiness and grandeur? (But that comparison could still sound a little too mundane and plasticky, and may be heresy to the true Nabokov devotee, there being many among friends and friends-of-friends on GR.)
Nor a narrative voice I would bond with, to the extent that, looking through highlights a few weeks after reading, I felt as if I were reading lines from a character I'd once read and rehearsed for a term to act in a play. Or as if it were notes made just after a vivid dream, that - along with that idyllic bit of summer between sixth form and university when I'd gone to a summer school and got to know, for the first time, people my age who were intimidatingly clever and entertaining, like people in books - there had been something similar when I was a pre-teen, when I'd met this other brilliant child who was obsessed with chess and butterflies. It felt as if we had bonded over the experience of being looked after by an unusually rapid succession of employees (nannies in my case, governesses and tutors in his) that had provided something of a social panorama within an ostensibly sheltered life, and via a tendency towards intensively obsessive interests, a drive to collect and collate things and information - and odd intellectual losses; I used to be able to 'see through' anagrams, he had lost some preternatural ability with maths after a fever. I don't have synaesthesia, but it has always made perfect sense to me and sounds like it's a dial turned up a little further on something I already experience. But I was overawed by what I heard about his family's house. Never mind the houses of a few people from school who lived in mini-mansions on a prestigious development and that itself seemed to be another tier of existence (an where footballers would later live, when that became a yardstick), these people lived in an actual stately home. Servants rushed outside with jackets when they were caught in the rain playing tennis; to go to school, there were two different chauffeur-driven cars. When he was little had been given gigantic display toys from shops as presents, which seemed like something that happened to the rich children from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The collecting. Reading about it initially, I felt only sadness at all the dead butterflies. (At one point I was moved to say to a butterfly sitting on the window - probably a small tortoiseshell, but its wings were closed so it was harder to tell for sure - "enjoy being alive".) Why did they have to collect living creatures, why did every collector have to have examples? But that particular angry point made wires in my head spark and connect and then of course I understood. Twitching - merely making lists - had somehow never felt like enough (as a preteen birdwatcher I wondered how adults didn't get bored doing that for so many years) and it all fell into place, what he would have got from the butterfly collecting. The tangible, visible items to keep as badge of attainment and reminder of experience; the classification; their ultimate but unattainable finity, but possibility of completism in subcategories. Their special connection with place; a reason for purposeful wandering and exploring outdoors; the thrill that items pertaining to the collection were out there for the taking if one could find them. Indoors, the hoovering of complex factual information which also fits neat categories, and the satisfaction of using it later. A pursuit that can be entirely satisfying alone, but also, if desired, makes one part of a community where one can partake in the drug of relevant information with others and potentially acquire prestige. Of course. I understood to the point of having a craving. It even sprang on me early one morning when I was unloading the dishwasher - the strongest impulse to go and do something as similar as possible (that didn't involve killing anything). And where did this impulse lead? A Pok茅mon game, dammit! I can't be the first person to name a Beautifly 'Vladimir'. (And this, the first time I'd played Pok茅mon, led to an understanding I'd never really sought of the phenomenon: collecting and detailed information as per previous, plus quest, plus fighting, sanitised bloodsports, and given the protagonists' age, a virtual, kawaii, individualist update of something like the ancient koryos youth war-bands, and no doubt equivalents in Japanese - samurai? - history whose names I don't know. With so many hooks, and introduced just as gaming was going mainstream, no wonder it became massive.) I could understand exactly why a geeky kid had got into butterfly collecting in the days when it was an activity as acceptable as stamp collecting was when I was a preteen. For a couple of weeks afterwards, even just writing about it conjured up the same set of cravings. Curious to experience this intensely strong drive and understanding at the same time as being so sad about all the things that were killed by collectors for a couple of centuries or so, and find it appalling, in our fauna-depleted world, that something being rare was a particular reason to kill one. (Yet: got it!!!)
Speak Memory is a memoir of imaginings and tangents of mind almost as much as of things that happened - so why not take recursive licence to write more in response?
Especially in British culture, there is an association between being rich and being stupid, as exemplified by Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch, and Harry Enfield's Tim Nice But Dim. So when reading Speak Memory from a marginally more detached and less dreamlike viewpoint, I had a sense of "does not compute": despite the well-known concept of the Russian and Central European intelligentsia, it seemed incongruous that razor-sharp intellect Vladimir Nabokov and his equally clever parents could have come from any sort of hereditary aristocracy, even one relatively recent compared with Anglo-Normans. (And before I started this book, I'd always assumed his family must have been professionals from the petty gentry / upper middle class, though I'd barely thought about it. The sort of people, who, in an English inter-war novel, have a village manor house whose roof they can never quite afford to repair properly, financially on a par with doctors and lawyers of their day.)
The book got me thinking about class and relatability in literature. I had an epiphany about one reason why the middle classes may be held responsible for idealising the aristocracy as characters. (Even if a lot of middle-class contemporary literature is about other middle-class people and a lot of popular entertainment focuses on rich celebrities.) The gap between, in today's money, a household income of 拢20k and one of 拢90k, is a lot less in monetary terms than the gap between the 拢90k and Nabokov's inheritance from an uncle, aged seventeen, "what would amount nowadays to a couple of million dollars and his country estate" (assuming he was quoting 1950s-1960s dollar values, that would be $16-19m in 2019 money). But the kid growing up in the 拢90k household with a nanny and a weekly cleaner and gardener will grok the aristocratic child's experience of servants in a way in a way that the one from the 拢20k household won't, where there's never been anyone paid regularly to do chores. I say literature because on film and TV, the surroundings remind the well-off middle-class kid how different the aristocracy still are, whereas in a book that can seem less emphatic at times. And whilst in a British memoir of this vintage there would be that great divide of boarding school, that appears not to have been a phenomenon in early 20th century Russia; the Nabokov boys get driven to a day school, which makes it seem a little closer to modern life.
(I can only assume that this book, with its tales of the Nabokov family's many governesses and tutors, many of whom only stayed for a few months each, was why my mother thought it so amusing and interesting that nannies never stayed long, and she saw it as a sort of adventure and anecdote-fodder, rather than a negative reflection on herself and on me, as would be the usual modern middle class perspective.)
Anyway, I hope I've adequately warned readers who may be disgusted by the Nabokovs' pre-revolutionary wealth and staff. Many people love this memoir, but not everyone would.
Stories of fallen Imperial Russian aristocracy often have a sense of shock and personal calamity to them. Under every pretty reminiscence lurks the writer's darkness of trauma and loss. Not so here; it doesn't feel anywhere near so seismic, so unprocessed; no wailing and rending of garments. Of course there was a huge change to the Nabokovs' lives , but in tone it feels much closer to a memoir of England before the First World War. As if not quite so much was lost; that the writer is fully able to appreciate and feel how (excessively) lucky they were and fully inhabit the idyllic stories of the old days; and just not as emotional.
Nabokov grew up speaking English, with an admiration for the British that was common for rich people of his day - and one could read into Speak Memory a certain amount of traditionally British diffidence in his character, whether learned or inherent, who knows. And it's as if his psyche absorbed all the luck and good parenting of his upbringing, and the resilience one is supposed to get from that is playing out in the way he writes about what happened. He doesn't sound traumatised. There are some unpleasant things that happened to him and his family, but they never feel like the centre of his mental world. Rather, one is left with vignettes of that glittering veneer of old Russian-ness which Christmas productions of The Nutcracker trade on. The vast countryside, small boys riding a dog in the snow, casual mentions of Faberg茅 eggs; beautiful peasant girls and gnarly old gardeners; the intelligentsia that seems such a wonderful tradition to those who decry the anti-intellectualism of Anglo-American culture.
When I was younger I loved stories about being at the centre of things, which often meant, unironically, areas of London like Hampstead; often now I scoff and think that's all terribly overrated and tiring. But Nabokov's tales of the days when his father was a liberal government minister under Kerensky, and there were "meetings of national importance" in their house, made me feel that rush again. Even if the Nabokov family's pre-revolutionary lifestyle is almost comically opulent and makes most North London champagne socialists look like the epitome of thrift.
The most direct commentary we get on his change in fortune from super-rich to merely comfortable professional is this: "The following passage is not for the general reader, but for the particular idiot who, because he lost a fortune in some crash, thinks he understands me. My contempt for the 茅migr茅 who 鈥渉ates the Reds鈥� because they 鈥渟tole鈥� his money and land is complete. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes 鈥� I reserve for myself the right to yearn after an ecological niche: 鈥� For one locality in Russia."
But anyone who hopes for Nabokov the Marxist (Is there anyone?) will be disappointed. He makes little direct comment on it except for this, near the end, now a young father: "there is in every child the essentially human urge to reshape the earth, to act upon a friable environment (unless he is a born Marxist or a corpse and meekly waits for the environment to fashion him)." Those seem so very much the words of an influential man of the twentieth century, someone who grew up seeing his own ancestors' names on plaques in museums - and of a moment in time when human supremacy over nature seemed strongest and least controversial.
I had thought that, through a sense of continued connection to Russia, he was disowning and othering some of the worst episodes of the Second World War "early in 1946, to be exact鈥攁 sudden crop of infants with Turkic or Mongol blood in their innocent veins". (This was in Berlin.) But a few weeks later, an argument elsewhere on GR with a Russian, and then something elsewhere was a reminder of the composite way in which Russians see their identity, and Turkic/Mongol is part of that. Yes, the ascription of war rape to that aspect of the Russian identity does still look very suspect from the Western intersectional perspective, but I think he means a part of the Russian collective/historical self, much like the id is still part of the self in the Freudian schema. (Nabokov hated Freud.)
Continued in comment 3 below.
(Read August, reviewed Oct 2020)
Lolita belonged to a later, outside world, of cult books and lists of modern classics that became increasingly familiar through my teens. I somehow felt as if it were by another author altogether. Lolita wasn't the sort of book that would have been in the house. This early instinct about the difference between the two books as worlds was borne out in the reading far more than I, middle aged and, finally, about to start Speak Memory, had figured it would be.
Several years after having read Lolita, and familiar with blurbs and reviews of other Nabokov books, there were things I expected from his work: intellectual, creepy, detached; makes one more aware of unpleasant sides of oneself. Beautifully written, which in combination with the subject matter, messes with my head in a way that is not fun and not welcome. Anything but comfortable.
(The apotheosis of that mind-twisting beautiful/horrific combination, for me, has to be visual though, and it's why I never managed to watch more than three or four episodes of Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal.)
I never expected something that, when I asked myself how I'd describe Speak Memory to someone who only knew of Nabokov because of Lolita, and was a bit uncomfortable with him because of that, brought to mind Downton Abbey. How else to communicate to the average Anglo reader this magical mingling of cosiness and grandeur? (But that comparison could still sound a little too mundane and plasticky, and may be heresy to the true Nabokov devotee, there being many among friends and friends-of-friends on GR.)
Nor a narrative voice I would bond with, to the extent that, looking through highlights a few weeks after reading, I felt as if I were reading lines from a character I'd once read and rehearsed for a term to act in a play. Or as if it were notes made just after a vivid dream, that - along with that idyllic bit of summer between sixth form and university when I'd gone to a summer school and got to know, for the first time, people my age who were intimidatingly clever and entertaining, like people in books - there had been something similar when I was a pre-teen, when I'd met this other brilliant child who was obsessed with chess and butterflies. It felt as if we had bonded over the experience of being looked after by an unusually rapid succession of employees (nannies in my case, governesses and tutors in his) that had provided something of a social panorama within an ostensibly sheltered life, and via a tendency towards intensively obsessive interests, a drive to collect and collate things and information - and odd intellectual losses; I used to be able to 'see through' anagrams, he had lost some preternatural ability with maths after a fever. I don't have synaesthesia, but it has always made perfect sense to me and sounds like it's a dial turned up a little further on something I already experience. But I was overawed by what I heard about his family's house. Never mind the houses of a few people from school who lived in mini-mansions on a prestigious development and that itself seemed to be another tier of existence (an where footballers would later live, when that became a yardstick), these people lived in an actual stately home. Servants rushed outside with jackets when they were caught in the rain playing tennis; to go to school, there were two different chauffeur-driven cars. When he was little had been given gigantic display toys from shops as presents, which seemed like something that happened to the rich children from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The collecting. Reading about it initially, I felt only sadness at all the dead butterflies. (At one point I was moved to say to a butterfly sitting on the window - probably a small tortoiseshell, but its wings were closed so it was harder to tell for sure - "enjoy being alive".) Why did they have to collect living creatures, why did every collector have to have examples? But that particular angry point made wires in my head spark and connect and then of course I understood. Twitching - merely making lists - had somehow never felt like enough (as a preteen birdwatcher I wondered how adults didn't get bored doing that for so many years) and it all fell into place, what he would have got from the butterfly collecting. The tangible, visible items to keep as badge of attainment and reminder of experience; the classification; their ultimate but unattainable finity, but possibility of completism in subcategories. Their special connection with place; a reason for purposeful wandering and exploring outdoors; the thrill that items pertaining to the collection were out there for the taking if one could find them. Indoors, the hoovering of complex factual information which also fits neat categories, and the satisfaction of using it later. A pursuit that can be entirely satisfying alone, but also, if desired, makes one part of a community where one can partake in the drug of relevant information with others and potentially acquire prestige. Of course. I understood to the point of having a craving. It even sprang on me early one morning when I was unloading the dishwasher - the strongest impulse to go and do something as similar as possible (that didn't involve killing anything). And where did this impulse lead? A Pok茅mon game, dammit! I can't be the first person to name a Beautifly 'Vladimir'. (And this, the first time I'd played Pok茅mon, led to an understanding I'd never really sought of the phenomenon: collecting and detailed information as per previous, plus quest, plus fighting, sanitised bloodsports, and given the protagonists' age, a virtual, kawaii, individualist update of something like the ancient koryos youth war-bands, and no doubt equivalents in Japanese - samurai? - history whose names I don't know. With so many hooks, and introduced just as gaming was going mainstream, no wonder it became massive.) I could understand exactly why a geeky kid had got into butterfly collecting in the days when it was an activity as acceptable as stamp collecting was when I was a preteen. For a couple of weeks afterwards, even just writing about it conjured up the same set of cravings. Curious to experience this intensely strong drive and understanding at the same time as being so sad about all the things that were killed by collectors for a couple of centuries or so, and find it appalling, in our fauna-depleted world, that something being rare was a particular reason to kill one. (Yet: got it!!!)
Speak Memory is a memoir of imaginings and tangents of mind almost as much as of things that happened - so why not take recursive licence to write more in response?
Especially in British culture, there is an association between being rich and being stupid, as exemplified by Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch, and Harry Enfield's Tim Nice But Dim. So when reading Speak Memory from a marginally more detached and less dreamlike viewpoint, I had a sense of "does not compute": despite the well-known concept of the Russian and Central European intelligentsia, it seemed incongruous that razor-sharp intellect Vladimir Nabokov and his equally clever parents could have come from any sort of hereditary aristocracy, even one relatively recent compared with Anglo-Normans. (And before I started this book, I'd always assumed his family must have been professionals from the petty gentry / upper middle class, though I'd barely thought about it. The sort of people, who, in an English inter-war novel, have a village manor house whose roof they can never quite afford to repair properly, financially on a par with doctors and lawyers of their day.)
The book got me thinking about class and relatability in literature. I had an epiphany about one reason why the middle classes may be held responsible for idealising the aristocracy as characters. (Even if a lot of middle-class contemporary literature is about other middle-class people and a lot of popular entertainment focuses on rich celebrities.) The gap between, in today's money, a household income of 拢20k and one of 拢90k, is a lot less in monetary terms than the gap between the 拢90k and Nabokov's inheritance from an uncle, aged seventeen, "what would amount nowadays to a couple of million dollars and his country estate" (assuming he was quoting 1950s-1960s dollar values, that would be $16-19m in 2019 money). But the kid growing up in the 拢90k household with a nanny and a weekly cleaner and gardener will grok the aristocratic child's experience of servants in a way in a way that the one from the 拢20k household won't, where there's never been anyone paid regularly to do chores. I say literature because on film and TV, the surroundings remind the well-off middle-class kid how different the aristocracy still are, whereas in a book that can seem less emphatic at times. And whilst in a British memoir of this vintage there would be that great divide of boarding school, that appears not to have been a phenomenon in early 20th century Russia; the Nabokov boys get driven to a day school, which makes it seem a little closer to modern life.
(I can only assume that this book, with its tales of the Nabokov family's many governesses and tutors, many of whom only stayed for a few months each, was why my mother thought it so amusing and interesting that nannies never stayed long, and she saw it as a sort of adventure and anecdote-fodder, rather than a negative reflection on herself and on me, as would be the usual modern middle class perspective.)
Anyway, I hope I've adequately warned readers who may be disgusted by the Nabokovs' pre-revolutionary wealth and staff. Many people love this memoir, but not everyone would.
Stories of fallen Imperial Russian aristocracy often have a sense of shock and personal calamity to them. Under every pretty reminiscence lurks the writer's darkness of trauma and loss. Not so here; it doesn't feel anywhere near so seismic, so unprocessed; no wailing and rending of garments. Of course there was a huge change to the Nabokovs' lives , but in tone it feels much closer to a memoir of England before the First World War. As if not quite so much was lost; that the writer is fully able to appreciate and feel how (excessively) lucky they were and fully inhabit the idyllic stories of the old days; and just not as emotional.
Nabokov grew up speaking English, with an admiration for the British that was common for rich people of his day - and one could read into Speak Memory a certain amount of traditionally British diffidence in his character, whether learned or inherent, who knows. And it's as if his psyche absorbed all the luck and good parenting of his upbringing, and the resilience one is supposed to get from that is playing out in the way he writes about what happened. He doesn't sound traumatised. There are some unpleasant things that happened to him and his family, but they never feel like the centre of his mental world. Rather, one is left with vignettes of that glittering veneer of old Russian-ness which Christmas productions of The Nutcracker trade on. The vast countryside, small boys riding a dog in the snow, casual mentions of Faberg茅 eggs; beautiful peasant girls and gnarly old gardeners; the intelligentsia that seems such a wonderful tradition to those who decry the anti-intellectualism of Anglo-American culture.
When I was younger I loved stories about being at the centre of things, which often meant, unironically, areas of London like Hampstead; often now I scoff and think that's all terribly overrated and tiring. But Nabokov's tales of the days when his father was a liberal government minister under Kerensky, and there were "meetings of national importance" in their house, made me feel that rush again. Even if the Nabokov family's pre-revolutionary lifestyle is almost comically opulent and makes most North London champagne socialists look like the epitome of thrift.
The most direct commentary we get on his change in fortune from super-rich to merely comfortable professional is this: "The following passage is not for the general reader, but for the particular idiot who, because he lost a fortune in some crash, thinks he understands me. My contempt for the 茅migr茅 who 鈥渉ates the Reds鈥� because they 鈥渟tole鈥� his money and land is complete. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes 鈥� I reserve for myself the right to yearn after an ecological niche: 鈥� For one locality in Russia."
But anyone who hopes for Nabokov the Marxist (Is there anyone?) will be disappointed. He makes little direct comment on it except for this, near the end, now a young father: "there is in every child the essentially human urge to reshape the earth, to act upon a friable environment (unless he is a born Marxist or a corpse and meekly waits for the environment to fashion him)." Those seem so very much the words of an influential man of the twentieth century, someone who grew up seeing his own ancestors' names on plaques in museums - and of a moment in time when human supremacy over nature seemed strongest and least controversial.
I had thought that, through a sense of continued connection to Russia, he was disowning and othering some of the worst episodes of the Second World War "early in 1946, to be exact鈥攁 sudden crop of infants with Turkic or Mongol blood in their innocent veins". (This was in Berlin.) But a few weeks later, an argument elsewhere on GR with a Russian, and then something elsewhere was a reminder of the composite way in which Russians see their identity, and Turkic/Mongol is part of that. Yes, the ascription of war rape to that aspect of the Russian identity does still look very suspect from the Western intersectional perspective, but I think he means a part of the Russian collective/historical self, much like the id is still part of the self in the Freudian schema. (Nabokov hated Freud.)
Continued in comment 3 below.
(Read August, reviewed Oct 2020)
September 17, 2023
This is a beautiful, luminous evocation of a lost time and place as much as it is an autobiography. Nabokov's tales of the Russia and Europe of his youth remind me a bit of Robert Graves' description of his youth visiting aunts and uncles in Germany before the Great War. Nabokov lived an extraordinary, privileged life in pre-Soviet Russia, and then was plunged into genteel poverty for twenty years after his graduation from Cambridge by his parents' loss during the Revolution of all their property except a handful of jewels smuggled out of Russia.
The prose is amazing, especially from one for whom English was not a second language, but a third. His love of his parents, and later of Vera and his son, shines in his paragraphs. His love of Russia and his feeling of loss for his country, not money or houses, is just as clear. What was lost in the Russian Revolution were men like his father who were trying to steer the country toward Western democracy; they were replaced by the unquestioning minions of Stalin and Lenin. Nabokov understood nature, not just butterflies, but trees and host plants for moths and butterflies, and this understanding continued to play a part in his later works.
As an undergraduate, Nab tries to convince an English intellectual at Cambridge of the essential viciousness of the Soviets and of Lenin personally, and is rebuffed or dismissed as a bitter "White Russian". His frustration with the British intelligentsia's idealization of the Russian Revolution in the 1920's was complete. It's a shame that he never moved forward with his oft-discussed second volume of his autobiography covering his life in the US, but possibly he could not summon the required level of passion for his adopted country as he could draw on when writing about Russia.
What a wonderful book, and thanks to Lori for encouraging me to undertake it.
The prose is amazing, especially from one for whom English was not a second language, but a third. His love of his parents, and later of Vera and his son, shines in his paragraphs. His love of Russia and his feeling of loss for his country, not money or houses, is just as clear. What was lost in the Russian Revolution were men like his father who were trying to steer the country toward Western democracy; they were replaced by the unquestioning minions of Stalin and Lenin. Nabokov understood nature, not just butterflies, but trees and host plants for moths and butterflies, and this understanding continued to play a part in his later works.
As an undergraduate, Nab tries to convince an English intellectual at Cambridge of the essential viciousness of the Soviets and of Lenin personally, and is rebuffed or dismissed as a bitter "White Russian". His frustration with the British intelligentsia's idealization of the Russian Revolution in the 1920's was complete. It's a shame that he never moved forward with his oft-discussed second volume of his autobiography covering his life in the US, but possibly he could not summon the required level of passion for his adopted country as he could draw on when writing about Russia.
What a wonderful book, and thanks to Lori for encouraging me to undertake it.
January 31, 2021
袙械谢懈泻懈泄 褉褍褋褋泻懈泄 锌懈褋邪褌械谢褜 胁褋锌芯屑懈薪邪械褌 褋胁芯械 胁械谢懈泻芯械 褉褍褋褋泻芯械 写械褌褋褌胁芯.
袩褉械谢械褋褌褜 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁邪 泻邪泻 褋褌懈谢懈褋褌邪, 褉邪蟹褍屑械械褌褋褟, 胁 褌芯屑, 薪邪褋泻芯谢褜泻芯 芯薪 薪械 斜芯懈褌褋褟 褟蟹褘泻邪 懈 褋械斜褟 胁 褝褌芯屑 褟蟹褘泻械, 薪械 斜芯懈褌褋褟 胁褘褔褍褉薪芯褋褌懈, 薪械谢械锌芯褋褌懈, 谐褉芯屑芯蟹写泻芯谐芯 芯斜褉褍褋械薪懈褟 褋褍褏芯锌邪褉褘褏 邪薪谐谢懈泄褋泻懈褏 褋谢芯胁 懈 薪邪谐褉芯屑芯卸写械薪懈褟 锌褉懈谢邪谐邪褌械谢褜薪褘褏. 袝谐芯 褌械泻褋褌 薪械 胁褘谐谢褟写懈褌 胁褘褋褌褉芯械薪薪褘屑, 褝褌芯 锌谢邪胁薪芯 懈 褋邪屑邪 褋芯斜芯泄 褌械泻褍褖邪褟 褉械褔褜, 泻芯褌芯褉邪褟 胁芯写芯泄 芯谐懈斜邪械褌 胁褋械 褝褌懈 薪械芯卸懈写邪薪薪褘械 泻邪屑械褕泻懈 胁褉芯写械 芦锌芯斜褉械泻褎邪褋褌邪褌褜禄 懈 薪械卸薪械泄褕懈褏 芦锌褟褌懈写械褋褟褌懈谢械褌薪懈褏 褌芯谢褋褌褟泻芯胁 胁 褌褉褍褋懈泻邪褏禄, 薪械 褌械褉褟褟 胁薪褍褌褉械薪薪械谐芯 褉褍褔械懈褋褌芯谐芯 褉懈褌屑邪.
袩褉械谢械褋褌褜 袧邪斜芯泻芯胁邪 泻邪泻 褋褌懈谢懈褋褌邪, 褉邪蟹褍屑械械褌褋褟, 胁 褌芯屑, 薪邪褋泻芯谢褜泻芯 芯薪 薪械 斜芯懈褌褋褟 褟蟹褘泻邪 懈 褋械斜褟 胁 褝褌芯屑 褟蟹褘泻械, 薪械 斜芯懈褌褋褟 胁褘褔褍褉薪芯褋褌懈, 薪械谢械锌芯褋褌懈, 谐褉芯屑芯蟹写泻芯谐芯 芯斜褉褍褋械薪懈褟 褋褍褏芯锌邪褉褘褏 邪薪谐谢懈泄褋泻懈褏 褋谢芯胁 懈 薪邪谐褉芯屑芯卸写械薪懈褟 锌褉懈谢邪谐邪褌械谢褜薪褘褏. 袝谐芯 褌械泻褋褌 薪械 胁褘谐谢褟写懈褌 胁褘褋褌褉芯械薪薪褘屑, 褝褌芯 锌谢邪胁薪芯 懈 褋邪屑邪 褋芯斜芯泄 褌械泻褍褖邪褟 褉械褔褜, 泻芯褌芯褉邪褟 胁芯写芯泄 芯谐懈斜邪械褌 胁褋械 褝褌懈 薪械芯卸懈写邪薪薪褘械 泻邪屑械褕泻懈 胁褉芯写械 芦锌芯斜褉械泻褎邪褋褌邪褌褜禄 懈 薪械卸薪械泄褕懈褏 芦锌褟褌懈写械褋褟褌懈谢械褌薪懈褏 褌芯谢褋褌褟泻芯胁 胁 褌褉褍褋懈泻邪褏禄, 薪械 褌械褉褟褟 胁薪褍褌褉械薪薪械谐芯 褉褍褔械懈褋褌芯谐芯 褉懈褌屑邪.
July 19, 2007
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 to why he wrote 'Lolita' or whatever. What you get is the greatest prose artist of the 20th Century at his finest. Nabokov takes the mildly interesting raw material of his own life and transforms it into luminous art.
December 27, 2012
Finis! There are parts of this memoir that I absolutely loved and there are parts, mostly later in the memoir and in Nabokov's life, that I found more difficult to embrace as a reader. The Everyman's Library Edition I read also has an excellent introduction by Brian Boyd which offers great insights into the book, especially for a reader like me who has no background in Nabokov.
To outline the task he had set before him, Nabokov writes in his Foreward
"This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had
been an English re-telling of Russian memories in the
first place, proved to be a diabolical task, but some
consolation was given me by the thought that such multiple
metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried
by any human before." (p 6)
This mention of butterflies is but an early allusion to what will be a life-long hobby pursued in Russia and every county Nabokov lived in exile.
Nabokov is a man between worlds, of a patrician background lost in the Russian Revolution, but he does not appear to live with regret. Instead he clings to the memories of the Russia he has loved, the Russia he knew as a much loved child, and provides wonderful descriptions of the sights and people of that world. In one descriptive passage of the arrival of a new tutor coming to the estate by sleigh in the winter, Nabokov's worlds collide.
"Very lovely, very lonesome. but what am I doing in this
dreamland? How did I get here? Somehow the two sleighs have
slipped away leaving behind a passportless spy standing on
the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat.
The vibration in my ears is no longer their receding bells,
but only my old blood singing. All is still, spellbound,
enthralled by the moon, fancy's rear-vision mirror. The snow is
real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful,
sixty years crumble to glittering frost-dust between my fingers"
(pp 73-74)
There are many delightful sections in this overall wonderful memoir. At times it can become obscure and pedantic---Nabokov's language is not that of most authors I read. but the emotional content is accessible. In the chapter dealing with his burgeoning fascination with butterflies, he states "I found the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception." p 95
Among my favorite chapters are those dealing with the multiple tutors/mentor/governesses he and his closest brother had in Russia, the chapter about his mother, that chapter that describes his "discovery" of poetry, and the descriptions of his teenage loves. He gives little away here but there is a sense of loss.
Some of the later chapters I found rougher going as VN travels in Europe and settles into a course of life. Perhaps the emotional level was not the same? The emotion rushes back with the birth of his son Dimitri.
All in all I enjoyed this memoir while recognizing I was in the presence of someone who does not think as I do, who creates and writes on a different plane with a use of English (even as a second language) that is far more extensive than mine. With that caveat, I recommend it to others who enjoy reading memoirs.
This is a strong 4 (possibly a 5 but for a few chapters I found less compelling).
To outline the task he had set before him, Nabokov writes in his Foreward
"This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had
been an English re-telling of Russian memories in the
first place, proved to be a diabolical task, but some
consolation was given me by the thought that such multiple
metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried
by any human before." (p 6)
This mention of butterflies is but an early allusion to what will be a life-long hobby pursued in Russia and every county Nabokov lived in exile.
Nabokov is a man between worlds, of a patrician background lost in the Russian Revolution, but he does not appear to live with regret. Instead he clings to the memories of the Russia he has loved, the Russia he knew as a much loved child, and provides wonderful descriptions of the sights and people of that world. In one descriptive passage of the arrival of a new tutor coming to the estate by sleigh in the winter, Nabokov's worlds collide.
"Very lovely, very lonesome. but what am I doing in this
dreamland? How did I get here? Somehow the two sleighs have
slipped away leaving behind a passportless spy standing on
the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat.
The vibration in my ears is no longer their receding bells,
but only my old blood singing. All is still, spellbound,
enthralled by the moon, fancy's rear-vision mirror. The snow is
real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful,
sixty years crumble to glittering frost-dust between my fingers"
(pp 73-74)
There are many delightful sections in this overall wonderful memoir. At times it can become obscure and pedantic---Nabokov's language is not that of most authors I read. but the emotional content is accessible. In the chapter dealing with his burgeoning fascination with butterflies, he states "I found the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception." p 95
Among my favorite chapters are those dealing with the multiple tutors/mentor/governesses he and his closest brother had in Russia, the chapter about his mother, that chapter that describes his "discovery" of poetry, and the descriptions of his teenage loves. He gives little away here but there is a sense of loss.
Some of the later chapters I found rougher going as VN travels in Europe and settles into a course of life. Perhaps the emotional level was not the same? The emotion rushes back with the birth of his son Dimitri.
All in all I enjoyed this memoir while recognizing I was in the presence of someone who does not think as I do, who creates and writes on a different plane with a use of English (even as a second language) that is far more extensive than mine. With that caveat, I recommend it to others who enjoy reading memoirs.
This is a strong 4 (possibly a 5 but for a few chapters I found less compelling).
April 26, 2024
4.5
I hadn鈥檛 read Nabokov in a long while and, after a friend asked if I鈥檇 read this, it seemed like a good next choice. It certainly was in that I鈥檝e already read , basically the only work of his he references, a glancing nod to his synesthesia, which is also a 'gift' his mother possessed.
But this isn鈥檛 a memoir about his writing, not in the literal sense. His childhood memories, especially of his mother, seem Proustian; the memories of his father become touching in a rough way as we get closer to how his father died. His love and admiration for his parents are evident, even if those words, or similar, are never used. His relationships with his siblings seem distant and he comes across as defensive when addressing their existence, as if he knows that says something about himself; he鈥檚 the oldest, but the age differences are not that great. I think of myself, the oldest of siblings similarly distanced in age; they had a huge influence on my memories and relationships, including those with our parents. I would understand if he was worried about their feelings or their privacy, but that doesn鈥檛 seem to be his concern.
If Nabokov doesn鈥檛 address his writing career per se, he reveals it in his renderings of his oldest memories; through his knowledge of entomology (I quickly realized the words in his unusual metaphors, the words I had to look up, were based in that avidity); of the young girls he becomes successively enamored of until they culminate in a physical relationship with Tamara; and of his description of his urge to create chess problems, which I imagine as similar to the urge to write. The direct address, eventually, to a 鈥測ou,鈥� his wife, especially about their son, is poignant and sweet鈥攜es, even Nabokov can be sweet when it comes to his young child.
*
After rereading Fionnuala鈥檚 review about her enjoyment of Chapter 16/Appendix by a purported Anonymous, which is not in my edition, I tried to find it online with no success. I鈥檓 leaving this as a note to myself to find it one day.
I hadn鈥檛 read Nabokov in a long while and, after a friend asked if I鈥檇 read this, it seemed like a good next choice. It certainly was in that I鈥檝e already read , basically the only work of his he references, a glancing nod to his synesthesia, which is also a 'gift' his mother possessed.
But this isn鈥檛 a memoir about his writing, not in the literal sense. His childhood memories, especially of his mother, seem Proustian; the memories of his father become touching in a rough way as we get closer to how his father died. His love and admiration for his parents are evident, even if those words, or similar, are never used. His relationships with his siblings seem distant and he comes across as defensive when addressing their existence, as if he knows that says something about himself; he鈥檚 the oldest, but the age differences are not that great. I think of myself, the oldest of siblings similarly distanced in age; they had a huge influence on my memories and relationships, including those with our parents. I would understand if he was worried about their feelings or their privacy, but that doesn鈥檛 seem to be his concern.
If Nabokov doesn鈥檛 address his writing career per se, he reveals it in his renderings of his oldest memories; through his knowledge of entomology (I quickly realized the words in his unusual metaphors, the words I had to look up, were based in that avidity); of the young girls he becomes successively enamored of until they culminate in a physical relationship with Tamara; and of his description of his urge to create chess problems, which I imagine as similar to the urge to write. The direct address, eventually, to a 鈥測ou,鈥� his wife, especially about their son, is poignant and sweet鈥攜es, even Nabokov can be sweet when it comes to his young child.
*
After rereading Fionnuala鈥檚 review about her enjoyment of Chapter 16/Appendix by a purported Anonymous, which is not in my edition, I tried to find it online with no success. I鈥檓 leaving this as a note to myself to find it one day.
February 24, 2023
Nabokov je zanimljiv leptir ruske knji啪evnosti jer nije lepr拧ao nijednim od dva osnovna toka ruske knji啪evnosti prve polovine dvadestog veka 鈥� nije tragao za novim herojskim 膷ovekom komunizma, niti novim misti膷kim 膷ovekom pravoslavlja. Nije tragao za novim i 鈥渂oljim鈥� 膷ovekom, mo啪da, jer je bio dovoljno samodopadljiv sam sebi. Da bi svoju posebnost i dokazao, bru拧io je stil do granice kriminaliteta jer kod Nabokova mi uvek ima ne膷eg ilegalnog u sposobnosti da pi拧e razljubi膷anstveno, a da opet ubedi da je 膷ovek od strogog ukusa.
鈥淧ri膷aj, se膰anje鈥� su Nabokovljevi memoari sa膷injeni od 15 poglavlja se膰anja na detinsjtvo provedeno u carskoj Rusiji i ne拧to manje o izbegli拧tvu u Evropi pre odlaska za Ameriku. Vlado je svestan da se Mnemosina, ipak, ispostavlja kao devojka sumnjivog pam膰enja, i da je njen zaziv pomalo komunikacija sa smetnjama na vezama, stoga, svoje memoare svesno oblikuje nalik na rasko拧nu mehani膷ku ku膰u za lutke u kojoj je sve unapred nadsmi拧ljeno ta se nakon navijanja, sve odvija u artificijelnom maniru prelepih detalja. Naposletku, Nabokov je prvu polovinu prvog toma Prustovog Traganja nazivao bajkom, a to je ono 拧to 啪eli da u膷ini i sa svojim se膰anjima - da 膷itaocima predstavi bajku svog izgubljenog detinjstva.
Nesumnjivo da je ovo jedna od najlep拧e napisanih knjiga koje sam pro膷itao u 啪ivotu. Dok je pisao poeziju Nabokov je verovao u strogi formalizam pesni膷kog iskaza (rime, slogovi, poseban jezik). Dok pi拧e prozu i dalje veruje u strogi formalizam; svako poglavlje ima svoj kljun i rep, ukrase, lajtmotive a preciznost izraza se nikada ne tupi ma koliko bila 鈥渙metana鈥� ukrasima. A ti ukrasi鈥� pa Nabokov zna da prevazi膽e i samog Nabokova kao, recimo, u trenutku kada pojam se膰anja u 膷oveku ostvari u vidu metafore osinih jaja polo啪enih u telo gusenice.
I da, i pored humora, rasko拧i, sitnih otrovnih strelica prema svemu i sva膷emu (posebno Frojdu), ironije i dendisti膷kog joie de vivre gde su radost i prezir srasli u jedno, Nabokovljevi memoari imaju vol拧ebnu notu poput neke stra拧ne pri膷e o duhovima (Zebald je tvrdio u eseju da je 膷ak i Nabokovljeva opsesija leptirima bila, zapravo, opsesija avetima). Personalni Hauntology pre same Hauntology.
Patila je celog 啪ivota; ta patnja je predstavljala njeno prirodno okru啪enje; samo su joj kolebanja te nesre膰a, njena razli膷ita dubina, davale utisak da se kre膰e I 啪ivi. Zabrinjava me 拧to oja膽enost, sama po sebi, nije dovoljna da sazda besmrtnu du拧u. Moja ogromna i mrzovoljna Madmoazel posve je prihvatljiva na zemlji, ali u ve膷nosti je nemogu膰a. Jesam li je uistinu spasao od doma拧tavanja?
鈥淧ri膷aj, se膰anje鈥� su Nabokovljevi memoari sa膷injeni od 15 poglavlja se膰anja na detinsjtvo provedeno u carskoj Rusiji i ne拧to manje o izbegli拧tvu u Evropi pre odlaska za Ameriku. Vlado je svestan da se Mnemosina, ipak, ispostavlja kao devojka sumnjivog pam膰enja, i da je njen zaziv pomalo komunikacija sa smetnjama na vezama, stoga, svoje memoare svesno oblikuje nalik na rasko拧nu mehani膷ku ku膰u za lutke u kojoj je sve unapred nadsmi拧ljeno ta se nakon navijanja, sve odvija u artificijelnom maniru prelepih detalja. Naposletku, Nabokov je prvu polovinu prvog toma Prustovog Traganja nazivao bajkom, a to je ono 拧to 啪eli da u膷ini i sa svojim se膰anjima - da 膷itaocima predstavi bajku svog izgubljenog detinjstva.
Nesumnjivo da je ovo jedna od najlep拧e napisanih knjiga koje sam pro膷itao u 啪ivotu. Dok je pisao poeziju Nabokov je verovao u strogi formalizam pesni膷kog iskaza (rime, slogovi, poseban jezik). Dok pi拧e prozu i dalje veruje u strogi formalizam; svako poglavlje ima svoj kljun i rep, ukrase, lajtmotive a preciznost izraza se nikada ne tupi ma koliko bila 鈥渙metana鈥� ukrasima. A ti ukrasi鈥� pa Nabokov zna da prevazi膽e i samog Nabokova kao, recimo, u trenutku kada pojam se膰anja u 膷oveku ostvari u vidu metafore osinih jaja polo啪enih u telo gusenice.
I da, i pored humora, rasko拧i, sitnih otrovnih strelica prema svemu i sva膷emu (posebno Frojdu), ironije i dendisti膷kog joie de vivre gde su radost i prezir srasli u jedno, Nabokovljevi memoari imaju vol拧ebnu notu poput neke stra拧ne pri膷e o duhovima (Zebald je tvrdio u eseju da je 膷ak i Nabokovljeva opsesija leptirima bila, zapravo, opsesija avetima). Personalni Hauntology pre same Hauntology.
Patila je celog 啪ivota; ta patnja je predstavljala njeno prirodno okru啪enje; samo su joj kolebanja te nesre膰a, njena razli膷ita dubina, davale utisak da se kre膰e I 啪ivi. Zabrinjava me 拧to oja膽enost, sama po sebi, nije dovoljna da sazda besmrtnu du拧u. Moja ogromna i mrzovoljna Madmoazel posve je prihvatljiva na zemlji, ali u ve膷nosti je nemogu膰a. Jesam li je uistinu spasao od doma拧tavanja?
July 28, 2014
Sometimes a book just happens to you, it finds you, popping up from an exhibition that you almost didn't go to, from a dusty corner of a college library or a tiny book shop. The flirting is momentary, you know this is the real thing; there is no hesitation. You take it home, its love at first sight ("and ever and ever sight"). Suddenly all your life so far seem so mundane and banal, a new world of tender mellowness opens - you assimilate it, drown and resurrect in it, live its sublimity, you become the book. Curled up, sprawled over a bed, by the window, under a sheet in torch light, you meet; the book and you. You can鈥檛 help it, it is an inevitability. Every time a guest drops in, or you have to leave for work, you swear horribly, because all you want to do is be with it, to be locked in an eternal read with it, a passion that you have never felt for anything else, anyone else. It seems as though you were waiting all your life for this moment, this juncture, this awakening, it is the beginning of a new journey. You realise you can still be happy reading and rereading only this one book for the rest of your life. In love with you, Nabokov for Speak, Memory for the universe you showed me, for Ada, for that ardor. I鈥檝e fallen in love with a life I can never possess, with places that I can never see, with feelings that I am struggling to experience.
June 12, 2018
螣喂 伪蠀蟿慰尾喂慰纬蟻伪蠁委蔚蟼 位慰纬慰蟿蔚蠂谓蠋谓 未蔚谓 渭蔚 蔚谓胃慰蠀蟽喂维味慰蠀谓 蠅蟼 蔚委未慰蟼. 危蠉渭蠁蠅谓伪 渭蔚 蟿畏 未喂魏萎 渭慰蠀 慰蟺蟿喂魏萎, 伪蠀蟿蠈 蟺慰蠀 苇蠂蔚喂 蟽畏渭伪蟽委伪 蔚委谓伪喂 蟺维谓蟿伪 魏伪喂 蟺蟻蠋蟿喂蟽蟿伪 蟿慰 苇蟻纬慰 魏伪喂 蠈蠂喂 慰喂 伪蟺蠈蠄蔚喂蟼, 慰喂 蟺蟻慰蟽蠅蟺喂魏蠈蟿畏蟿蔚蟼 萎 蟿伪 蟺蔚蟺蟻伪纬渭苇谓伪 蟿慰蠀蟼. 螖蔚未慰渭苇谓慰蠀 渭维位喂蟽蟿伪 蟺蠅蟼 蟺位萎蟿蟿蠅 伪蠁蠈蟻畏蟿伪 喂未委蠅蟼 渭蔚 蟿畏谓 蟺伪蟻维胃蔚蟽畏 蟽蟿喂纬渭蠋谓 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 蟺伪喂未喂魏萎 畏位喂魏委伪, 伪蟺慰蠁蔚蠉纬蠅 谓伪 伪谓伪位蠋谓蠅 蟺慰位蠉蟿喂渭慰 蠂蟻蠈谓慰 蟽蔚 魏维蟿喂 蟺慰蠀 蔚魏 蟺蟻慰慰喂渭委慰蠀 胃蔚蠅蟻蠋 伪谓慰蠉蟽喂慰.
螣蠁蔚委位蠅 蠈渭蠅蟼 谓伪 蟿慰谓委蟽蠅 蟺蠅蟼 蟿伪 蟺蟻慰畏纬畏胃苇谓蟿伪 未蔚谓 喂蟽蠂蠉慰蠀谓 蟽蟿畏谓 蟺蔚蟻委蟺蟿蠅蟽畏 蟿慰蠀 "螠委位畏蟽蔚 渭谓萎渭畏", 魏伪胃蠈蟿喂 蟺蟻蠈魏蔚喂蟿伪喂 纬喂伪 渭喂伪 伪渭喂纬蠋蟼 位慰纬慰蟿蔚蠂谓喂魏萎 伪蠀蟿慰尾喂慰纬蟻伪蠁委伪, 蟺喂蟽蟿萎 蟽蟿慰 蟺谓蔚蠉渭伪 蟿慰蠀 渭蔚纬维位慰蠀 伪纬伪蟺畏渭苇谓慰蠀 位慰纬慰蟿苇蠂谓畏. 惟蟼 蔚魏 蟿慰蠉蟿慰蠀, 蠈位伪 蠈蟽伪 蟺伪蟻伪蟿委胃蔚谓蟿伪喂 苇蠂慰蠀谓 蠁喂位蟿蟻伪蟻喂蟽蟿蔚委 渭苇蟽伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 慰蟺蟿喂魏萎 蟿慰蠀, 蠀蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 蔚谓慰蟺慰喂畏蟿喂魏萎 "蟽魏苇蟺畏" 蟿慰蠀 位慰纬慰蟿蔚蠂谓喂魏慰蠉 螏蠁慰蠀蟼 蟿慰蠀. 韦慰 伪蟺慰蟿苇位蔚蟽渭伪 蔚委谓伪喂 蟺蠅蟼 蟿慰 魏蔚委渭蔚谓慰 蟺慰蠀 未喂伪尾维味慰蠀渭蔚 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 伪蟺慰蟿蔚位蔚委 苇谓伪 伪魏蠈渭伪 蟽畏渭伪谓蟿喂魏蠈 苇蟻纬慰 蟿慰蠀 Nabokov 魏伪喂 位喂纬蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 渭喂伪 蔚蟺喂位蔚魏蟿喂魏萎 伪喂蟿喂慰位蠈纬畏蟽畏 蟺伪蟻蔚位胃慰蠀蟽蠋谓 魏伪蟿伪蟽蟿维蟽蔚蠅谓 魏伪喂 蔚魏 蟿蠅谓 蠀蟽蟿苇蟻蠅谓 蟽魏苇蠄蔚蠅谓 蠈蟽慰谓 伪蠁慰蟻维 蟿伪 蟺蔚蟺蟻伪纬渭苇谓伪.
螆谓伪 伪魏蠈渭伪 蟽蟿慰喂蠂蔚委慰, 蟿慰 慰蟺慰委慰 伪蠁慰蟻维 蠈渭蠅蟼 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 蟿慰蠀蟼 慰未蔚蠉慰谓蟿蔚蟼 蟺蟻慰蟼 蟿畏 渭苇蟽畏 畏位喂魏委伪 (未蔚谓 尉苇蟻蠅 纬喂伪蟿委 胃伪 渭蟺慰蟻慰蠉蟽蔚 谓伪 伪蠁慰蟻维 蟿慰蠀蟼 谓蔚蠈蟿蔚蟻慰蠀蟼, 蟺位畏谓 渭蠈谓慰 伪蟺蠈 蔚纬魏蠀魏位慰蟺伪喂未喂魏萎蟼 伪蟺蠈蠄蔚蠅蟼) 蔚委谓伪喂 蔚魏蔚委谓慰 蟿畏蟼 蟽畏渭伪蟽委伪蟼 蟿畏蟼 螠谓萎渭畏蟼, 维蟻伪 魏伪喂 蟿慰蠀 围蟻蠈谓慰蠀, 蟿慰蠀 慰蟺慰委慰蠀 蟿慰 蟺苇蟻伪蟽渭伪 尾喂蠋谓慰蠀渭蔚 蠅蟼 伪谓维渭谓畏蟽畏. 螖蔚谓 谓慰渭委味蠅 蟺蠅蟼 蠀蟺维蟻蠂蔚喂 魏维蟿喂 蟽畏渭伪谓蟿喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 蠈蟽慰谓 伪蠁慰蟻维 蟿畏谓 伪蟿慰渭喂魏萎 渭伪蟼 渭慰委蟻伪 魏伪喂 蔚蟺' 伪蠀蟿慰蠉 未蔚谓 伪蟺伪喂蟿慰蠉谓蟿伪喂 蔚蟺喂蟺位苇慰谓 位蠈纬喂伪. 螣 委未喂慰蟼 慰 Nabokov 蟿慰 苇胃蔚蟽蔚 渭慰谓伪未喂魏维: "螤伪蟿蟻委未伪 渭伪蟼, 蔚委谓伪喂 蟿慰 蟺伪蟻蔚位胃蠈谓 渭伪蟼!"
螣蠁蔚委位蠅 蠈渭蠅蟼 谓伪 蟿慰谓委蟽蠅 蟺蠅蟼 蟿伪 蟺蟻慰畏纬畏胃苇谓蟿伪 未蔚谓 喂蟽蠂蠉慰蠀谓 蟽蟿畏谓 蟺蔚蟻委蟺蟿蠅蟽畏 蟿慰蠀 "螠委位畏蟽蔚 渭谓萎渭畏", 魏伪胃蠈蟿喂 蟺蟻蠈魏蔚喂蟿伪喂 纬喂伪 渭喂伪 伪渭喂纬蠋蟼 位慰纬慰蟿蔚蠂谓喂魏萎 伪蠀蟿慰尾喂慰纬蟻伪蠁委伪, 蟺喂蟽蟿萎 蟽蟿慰 蟺谓蔚蠉渭伪 蟿慰蠀 渭蔚纬维位慰蠀 伪纬伪蟺畏渭苇谓慰蠀 位慰纬慰蟿苇蠂谓畏. 惟蟼 蔚魏 蟿慰蠉蟿慰蠀, 蠈位伪 蠈蟽伪 蟺伪蟻伪蟿委胃蔚谓蟿伪喂 苇蠂慰蠀谓 蠁喂位蟿蟻伪蟻喂蟽蟿蔚委 渭苇蟽伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 慰蟺蟿喂魏萎 蟿慰蠀, 蠀蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 蔚谓慰蟺慰喂畏蟿喂魏萎 "蟽魏苇蟺畏" 蟿慰蠀 位慰纬慰蟿蔚蠂谓喂魏慰蠉 螏蠁慰蠀蟼 蟿慰蠀. 韦慰 伪蟺慰蟿苇位蔚蟽渭伪 蔚委谓伪喂 蟺蠅蟼 蟿慰 魏蔚委渭蔚谓慰 蟺慰蠀 未喂伪尾维味慰蠀渭蔚 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 伪蟺慰蟿蔚位蔚委 苇谓伪 伪魏蠈渭伪 蟽畏渭伪谓蟿喂魏蠈 苇蟻纬慰 蟿慰蠀 Nabokov 魏伪喂 位喂纬蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 渭喂伪 蔚蟺喂位蔚魏蟿喂魏萎 伪喂蟿喂慰位蠈纬畏蟽畏 蟺伪蟻蔚位胃慰蠀蟽蠋谓 魏伪蟿伪蟽蟿维蟽蔚蠅谓 魏伪喂 蔚魏 蟿蠅谓 蠀蟽蟿苇蟻蠅谓 蟽魏苇蠄蔚蠅谓 蠈蟽慰谓 伪蠁慰蟻维 蟿伪 蟺蔚蟺蟻伪纬渭苇谓伪.
螆谓伪 伪魏蠈渭伪 蟽蟿慰喂蠂蔚委慰, 蟿慰 慰蟺慰委慰 伪蠁慰蟻维 蠈渭蠅蟼 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 蟿慰蠀蟼 慰未蔚蠉慰谓蟿蔚蟼 蟺蟻慰蟼 蟿畏 渭苇蟽畏 畏位喂魏委伪 (未蔚谓 尉苇蟻蠅 纬喂伪蟿委 胃伪 渭蟺慰蟻慰蠉蟽蔚 谓伪 伪蠁慰蟻维 蟿慰蠀蟼 谓蔚蠈蟿蔚蟻慰蠀蟼, 蟺位畏谓 渭蠈谓慰 伪蟺蠈 蔚纬魏蠀魏位慰蟺伪喂未喂魏萎蟼 伪蟺蠈蠄蔚蠅蟼) 蔚委谓伪喂 蔚魏蔚委谓慰 蟿畏蟼 蟽畏渭伪蟽委伪蟼 蟿畏蟼 螠谓萎渭畏蟼, 维蟻伪 魏伪喂 蟿慰蠀 围蟻蠈谓慰蠀, 蟿慰蠀 慰蟺慰委慰蠀 蟿慰 蟺苇蟻伪蟽渭伪 尾喂蠋谓慰蠀渭蔚 蠅蟼 伪谓维渭谓畏蟽畏. 螖蔚谓 谓慰渭委味蠅 蟺蠅蟼 蠀蟺维蟻蠂蔚喂 魏维蟿喂 蟽畏渭伪谓蟿喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 蠈蟽慰谓 伪蠁慰蟻维 蟿畏谓 伪蟿慰渭喂魏萎 渭伪蟼 渭慰委蟻伪 魏伪喂 蔚蟺' 伪蠀蟿慰蠉 未蔚谓 伪蟺伪喂蟿慰蠉谓蟿伪喂 蔚蟺喂蟺位苇慰谓 位蠈纬喂伪. 螣 委未喂慰蟼 慰 Nabokov 蟿慰 苇胃蔚蟽蔚 渭慰谓伪未喂魏维: "螤伪蟿蟻委未伪 渭伪蟼, 蔚委谓伪喂 蟿慰 蟺伪蟻蔚位胃蠈谓 渭伪蟼!"
July 29, 2019
After reading the personal experiences of a writer, normally I like the writer more than I did before. This wasn't the case with this book. My admiration for Nabokov's talent, intelligence and sense of humour increased, but I ended up annoyed with Nabokov as a person.
Born into an aristocratic and wealthy family, fifty servants, French and English governesses, Russian tutors, grand estates, limousines, Vladimir Nabokov's childhood was spent in a state of comfort at the very least. The child Vladimir was a domineering older brother, a snob, a spoilt precocious child.
Still Nabokov's prose was entrancing as always, and not just one passage per chapter but passage after passage of brilliant recollections. When tracing his ancestry to writing of his childhood, and later exile, after his world is cast away by the Bolshevik revolution. This was just an incredible book.
Born into an aristocratic and wealthy family, fifty servants, French and English governesses, Russian tutors, grand estates, limousines, Vladimir Nabokov's childhood was spent in a state of comfort at the very least. The child Vladimir was a domineering older brother, a snob, a spoilt precocious child.
Still Nabokov's prose was entrancing as always, and not just one passage per chapter but passage after passage of brilliant recollections. When tracing his ancestry to writing of his childhood, and later exile, after his world is cast away by the Bolshevik revolution. This was just an incredible book.
December 3, 2012
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist.
Please disregard the three stars above. There is no dark lined silvery cloud rating system in my unguarded border between love and hate. If you read quotes from Speak, Memory you will know that it has words of sublimity, knowing truth about beauty and art.
Here is one that I have loved for years:
But then, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
I have thought about that quote often (the first part is often left off. I can't understand why). I know what he is talking about. I would think that I can't relate to this man who must've sprung from his mother's loving womb into a world opened to other worlds that could be imprinted on the insides of eyelids like the too perfect to be anything but miraculous mimicry of his camouflaged moths to flame. This was a perfect realization from Nabokov that I don't think I would have done on my own. The smallest detail birthed just right on those wings (I wonder how many beats per second they need to sustain, if their flight manages to beat the necessity and work). It couldn't have been only for survival. I will think of his beautiful prose like those moths that were making themselves more than what they merely had to be survive. I love that he saw them that way. I don't know how many reviews of his works I've read over the years that were almost too jealous to be admiring that he could write as he does in his second language. The truth is that he had three first languages. English wasn't my first language. Mine was a made-up secret twin language that I didn't give up until I was three. I hate language because I have to give it up to have new words. His are worlds at once, with portals. If asked to explain the most basic English grammar like what is a noun or an adjective I could sweat like those times I panicked and couldn't remember my own ATM code or phone number. I admire and envy his visual ecstasy, where he wills to go. I love it, really. He did, however, hate music. In the most extreme emotional times he could tolerate the violin (my reason for living) and he hated the piano. I could never make myself into what I feel for music the way that Nabokov does his pleasures in his words. It is his own language. I know what he is talking about, though. He is looking too. I can't go where he went but he wanted to go somewhere else too.
So there were times when I absolutely hated reading this book. I squirmed in my seat as if I were the victim of multiple courses of Green Eggs and Ham. Reading in all of my favorite reading places of my car, bed and empty bathtub I would feel at once desperate to be done already and dog-earing pages to my memory as if his beautiful words could be butterflies pinned to delicate pages. My private Mariel time was intruded upon with some of the most boring times I have had all year (and that is saying something). A friend of mine on goodreads, Kristen, and myself have a longstanding argument/discussion about my criteria for what a memoir should be. I've consistently not explained myself very well. My twin also took me as expecting the person to take themselves with absolute truth, no attempts to make themselves look good, etc, denying understanding of how hard it would be to live with yourself if you gave up the constant wing beating. I want a portal into their lives. I want to be allowed entry, to pass between their shoulders and have room for me, Mariel, where I would never be allowed anywhere else. I want to learn the same rhythms. That world must contain the others in their lives, the look extending beyond corner of their eyes. I could ideally step out without them and look at others.
A lot of Speak, Memory is about servants in the Nabokov family. I liked his mother's former nurse who they give keys to a different food larder so that they won't starve to death and her feelings won't be hurt. Did she ever think about being born a slave? I liked that he tried to save Mademoiselle from his own use of her in his fictional work by writing about his memories of her in this book. It is interesting that he felt he lost his own memories once they were given to fiction. But I couldn't get past this feeling of them as servants. Maybe the fiction is more generous because it would give of yourself to the image of them in your mind. Who were they when they went home? Maybe they thought that young Vladimir was a nancy boy lolling about on a Turkish sofa to read War and Peace at the age of eleven (I was reading The Silence of the Lambs when I was eleven). I couldn't help but think about the governess who was sent away for seemingly no reason (my guess is that she had the young master help her search for the missing glove) while he was consoled with hot chocolate and drawings. I was reminded of reading Natasha's Dance (a very good book about the cultural history of Russia I read earlier this year. Umm, reconciling Tolstoy's noble peasants with how much their lives must have truly sucked so hard, yeah?). There came a point when I was bored to tears reading about how many thousands of servants (coughs slaves coughs) each nobleman had to their name. "Not again!" I love reading about the very Russian practice of hunting for mushrooms in the forest. I wanted very much to go on one of those hunts with Nabokov's beloved mum. I don't know, I was bothered by it all because it is so one-sided. I loved that he felt guilty about ditching his friend (who biked all the way to their home because his recently bankrupted family couldn't afford the train fare) to hunt for his butterflies in secret. But it's all about him and it is dull to force my brain edges into a one-sided affair.
The butterflies. I kind of get it and... Well, he was killing them to collect them in those books. I find it curious that he didn't once mention any conflicting feelings about this aspect of his obsession. He does about his own memory and using it in writing, but not about the lives of these creatures.
I had also read about this a long time before I read this book that he waits a long time to leave Nazi Germany even though his wife was Jewish. I guess this is why Kristen had suggested reading this memoir to prepare for Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (I might get pissed about proclamations of Sartre love and ignoring realities of abusing teenaged girls she had a position of power over, yeah). I don't want to sound judgmental because that is not how I feel in my heart. I have pets. Some of my pets are birds. It is something that I stab my mind with out of the dark at any time. I think if they could talk my dogs wouldn't tell the judge that they want to live with me instead of running wild (tell that to the dog catcher, guys!). (Speaking of dogs: Something the Nabokov family and my family have in common is the recurrence of dachshunds. I think they had twelve? My memory could be lying about this. Anyway, it was a lot. Mine had eight altogether.)
I can imagine how it felt to find the longed for rare butterfly to add to his collection. He might have missed that longing and replaced it with another quest. My life needs something to long for and think about to slow down time and make it faster. I know that Nabokov was like that. But my mind goes "But..." and the passion can be cruel. I wonder too much about what I killed to feed the fumbled love I invented for myself. What do they kill, in these memoirs? But what if they didn't want to be in a book? What if these people in his life didn't want to be in position to Vladimir Nabokov? (I guess they could write their own memoirs, if they didn't die under Leninism. I can't help but wonder why he wrote about this one tutor that much. It became like picking on someone behind their back...)
He writes in his fiction and in Speak, Memory about the expatriates who miss their Scrooge McDuck luxuries to swim in. Nabokov misses his childhood. And I know I'm being a jerk and kind of deliberately missing the point because I can't sidestep that trapped sick/boredom feeling I used to get so often in my own childhood. He was the center of the world in his childhood. He didn't have to think about his father's foot stabbing political sympathies for revolutionaries. His mother got his synesthesia because she had it too (although hers was for musical notes while he saw words in colors. I liked how he had only placed one of the rose pink colors to its living counterpart days before writing about it in his memoir). I loved how he could still feel the handle of his son's pram. But what about the girls who would smiles appeared only as he was approaching and departing? I want to know how he looked to them. My memoir criteria may be impossible. I want to be let in and I don't want to have to make it for myself.
A moment later my first poem began. What touched it off? I think I know. Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the center vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leap, dip, relief- the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say "patter" intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.
Nabokov's poetry was my favorite part of Speak, Memory. How to write poetry is to be able to notice all kinds of things that are happening all at once, all at once. Janet Frame's beginnings as a poet was also my favorite about her memoir To the Is-Land. I love to know how others reach out. I want to reach out too. I want to be let in more than anything. I feel if I could be let in then maybe I could reach something that has always been denied me. Like when you try to remember something and you can't.
Please disregard the three stars above. There is no dark lined silvery cloud rating system in my unguarded border between love and hate. If you read quotes from Speak, Memory you will know that it has words of sublimity, knowing truth about beauty and art.
Here is one that I have loved for years:
But then, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
I have thought about that quote often (the first part is often left off. I can't understand why). I know what he is talking about. I would think that I can't relate to this man who must've sprung from his mother's loving womb into a world opened to other worlds that could be imprinted on the insides of eyelids like the too perfect to be anything but miraculous mimicry of his camouflaged moths to flame. This was a perfect realization from Nabokov that I don't think I would have done on my own. The smallest detail birthed just right on those wings (I wonder how many beats per second they need to sustain, if their flight manages to beat the necessity and work). It couldn't have been only for survival. I will think of his beautiful prose like those moths that were making themselves more than what they merely had to be survive. I love that he saw them that way. I don't know how many reviews of his works I've read over the years that were almost too jealous to be admiring that he could write as he does in his second language. The truth is that he had three first languages. English wasn't my first language. Mine was a made-up secret twin language that I didn't give up until I was three. I hate language because I have to give it up to have new words. His are worlds at once, with portals. If asked to explain the most basic English grammar like what is a noun or an adjective I could sweat like those times I panicked and couldn't remember my own ATM code or phone number. I admire and envy his visual ecstasy, where he wills to go. I love it, really. He did, however, hate music. In the most extreme emotional times he could tolerate the violin (my reason for living) and he hated the piano. I could never make myself into what I feel for music the way that Nabokov does his pleasures in his words. It is his own language. I know what he is talking about, though. He is looking too. I can't go where he went but he wanted to go somewhere else too.
So there were times when I absolutely hated reading this book. I squirmed in my seat as if I were the victim of multiple courses of Green Eggs and Ham. Reading in all of my favorite reading places of my car, bed and empty bathtub I would feel at once desperate to be done already and dog-earing pages to my memory as if his beautiful words could be butterflies pinned to delicate pages. My private Mariel time was intruded upon with some of the most boring times I have had all year (and that is saying something). A friend of mine on goodreads, Kristen, and myself have a longstanding argument/discussion about my criteria for what a memoir should be. I've consistently not explained myself very well. My twin also took me as expecting the person to take themselves with absolute truth, no attempts to make themselves look good, etc, denying understanding of how hard it would be to live with yourself if you gave up the constant wing beating. I want a portal into their lives. I want to be allowed entry, to pass between their shoulders and have room for me, Mariel, where I would never be allowed anywhere else. I want to learn the same rhythms. That world must contain the others in their lives, the look extending beyond corner of their eyes. I could ideally step out without them and look at others.
A lot of Speak, Memory is about servants in the Nabokov family. I liked his mother's former nurse who they give keys to a different food larder so that they won't starve to death and her feelings won't be hurt. Did she ever think about being born a slave? I liked that he tried to save Mademoiselle from his own use of her in his fictional work by writing about his memories of her in this book. It is interesting that he felt he lost his own memories once they were given to fiction. But I couldn't get past this feeling of them as servants. Maybe the fiction is more generous because it would give of yourself to the image of them in your mind. Who were they when they went home? Maybe they thought that young Vladimir was a nancy boy lolling about on a Turkish sofa to read War and Peace at the age of eleven (I was reading The Silence of the Lambs when I was eleven). I couldn't help but think about the governess who was sent away for seemingly no reason (my guess is that she had the young master help her search for the missing glove) while he was consoled with hot chocolate and drawings. I was reminded of reading Natasha's Dance (a very good book about the cultural history of Russia I read earlier this year. Umm, reconciling Tolstoy's noble peasants with how much their lives must have truly sucked so hard, yeah?). There came a point when I was bored to tears reading about how many thousands of servants (coughs slaves coughs) each nobleman had to their name. "Not again!" I love reading about the very Russian practice of hunting for mushrooms in the forest. I wanted very much to go on one of those hunts with Nabokov's beloved mum. I don't know, I was bothered by it all because it is so one-sided. I loved that he felt guilty about ditching his friend (who biked all the way to their home because his recently bankrupted family couldn't afford the train fare) to hunt for his butterflies in secret. But it's all about him and it is dull to force my brain edges into a one-sided affair.
The butterflies. I kind of get it and... Well, he was killing them to collect them in those books. I find it curious that he didn't once mention any conflicting feelings about this aspect of his obsession. He does about his own memory and using it in writing, but not about the lives of these creatures.
I had also read about this a long time before I read this book that he waits a long time to leave Nazi Germany even though his wife was Jewish. I guess this is why Kristen had suggested reading this memoir to prepare for Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (I might get pissed about proclamations of Sartre love and ignoring realities of abusing teenaged girls she had a position of power over, yeah). I don't want to sound judgmental because that is not how I feel in my heart. I have pets. Some of my pets are birds. It is something that I stab my mind with out of the dark at any time. I think if they could talk my dogs wouldn't tell the judge that they want to live with me instead of running wild (tell that to the dog catcher, guys!). (Speaking of dogs: Something the Nabokov family and my family have in common is the recurrence of dachshunds. I think they had twelve? My memory could be lying about this. Anyway, it was a lot. Mine had eight altogether.)
I can imagine how it felt to find the longed for rare butterfly to add to his collection. He might have missed that longing and replaced it with another quest. My life needs something to long for and think about to slow down time and make it faster. I know that Nabokov was like that. But my mind goes "But..." and the passion can be cruel. I wonder too much about what I killed to feed the fumbled love I invented for myself. What do they kill, in these memoirs? But what if they didn't want to be in a book? What if these people in his life didn't want to be in position to Vladimir Nabokov? (I guess they could write their own memoirs, if they didn't die under Leninism. I can't help but wonder why he wrote about this one tutor that much. It became like picking on someone behind their back...)
He writes in his fiction and in Speak, Memory about the expatriates who miss their Scrooge McDuck luxuries to swim in. Nabokov misses his childhood. And I know I'm being a jerk and kind of deliberately missing the point because I can't sidestep that trapped sick/boredom feeling I used to get so often in my own childhood. He was the center of the world in his childhood. He didn't have to think about his father's foot stabbing political sympathies for revolutionaries. His mother got his synesthesia because she had it too (although hers was for musical notes while he saw words in colors. I liked how he had only placed one of the rose pink colors to its living counterpart days before writing about it in his memoir). I loved how he could still feel the handle of his son's pram. But what about the girls who would smiles appeared only as he was approaching and departing? I want to know how he looked to them. My memoir criteria may be impossible. I want to be let in and I don't want to have to make it for myself.
A moment later my first poem began. What touched it off? I think I know. Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the center vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leap, dip, relief- the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say "patter" intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.
Nabokov's poetry was my favorite part of Speak, Memory. How to write poetry is to be able to notice all kinds of things that are happening all at once, all at once. Janet Frame's beginnings as a poet was also my favorite about her memoir To the Is-Land. I love to know how others reach out. I want to reach out too. I want to be let in more than anything. I feel if I could be let in then maybe I could reach something that has always been denied me. Like when you try to remember something and you can't.
September 9, 2020
Disgusting that 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 attention is rewarded. Also recommended is a dictionary since his vocabulary is...good. Knowledge of French does not hurt either (possibly an offshoot of his indifference to making his point accessible are the many untranslated French sentences).
I found the discussion of his aristocratic pedigree a bit taxing at times, but he treats it all somewhat lightly so it is manageable.
In all, I really could not ask for more from a book. His insights, observations, ideas voiced, etc...they are worthwhile, priceless.
Describing the writing does not do it any justice, so here are some examples of what I liked:
Of the nothings he hears before falling asleep as a child
"It is a neutral, detached, anonymous voice, which I catch saying words of no importance to me whatever - an English or a Russian sentence, not even addressed to me, and so trivial that I hardly dare give samples, lest the flatness I wish to convey be marred by a molehill of sense."
(emphasis added, by me)
About his love for a person:
"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 fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence."
Other random selections:
"...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...And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction."
"The lilac shrubs in full bloom...displayed clusters of a fluffy gray in the dusk - the ghost of purple."
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 attention is rewarded. Also recommended is a dictionary since his vocabulary is...good. Knowledge of French does not hurt either (possibly an offshoot of his indifference to making his point accessible are the many untranslated French sentences).
I found the discussion of his aristocratic pedigree a bit taxing at times, but he treats it all somewhat lightly so it is manageable.
In all, I really could not ask for more from a book. His insights, observations, ideas voiced, etc...they are worthwhile, priceless.
Describing the writing does not do it any justice, so here are some examples of what I liked:
Of the nothings he hears before falling asleep as a child
"It is a neutral, detached, anonymous voice, which I catch saying words of no importance to me whatever - an English or a Russian sentence, not even addressed to me, and so trivial that I hardly dare give samples, lest the flatness I wish to convey be marred by a molehill of sense."
(emphasis added, by me)
About his love for a person:
"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 fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence."
Other random selections:
"...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...And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction."
"The lilac shrubs in full bloom...displayed clusters of a fluffy gray in the dusk - the ghost of purple."
December 6, 2014
賲賳 兀噩賲賱 賵兀毓馗賲 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賱鬲賷 賯乇兀鬲賴丕 賮賷 丨賷丕鬲賷貙 賵兀卮毓乇 亘兀賳賷 爻兀毓賵丿 賱賯乇丕亍鬲賴 賲乇丞 亘毓丿 丕賱兀禺乇賶 賮賷 丕賱賲爻鬲賯亘賱.
賵賱丕 賷丨鬲賵賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮丨爻亘 毓賱賶 乇丐賷丞 賳丕亘丕賰賵賮 丨賵賱 丕賱匕丕賰乇丞貙 賵丕賱卮賵賯貙 賵丕賱丨賳賷賳貙 賵丕賱賲賳賮賶貙 賵丕賱賵胤賳貙 賵丕毓丕丿丞 氐賳丕毓丞 丕賱賲丕囟賷 賵丕賱賴賵賷丞. 亘賱 兀賳賴 賷丨鬲賵賷 毓賱賶 亘毓囟 丌乇丕亍 賳丕亘丕賰賵賮 丕賱睾乇賷亘丞 賵丕賱賮乇賷丿丞 丨賵賱 賲賵丕囟賷毓 賲孬賱 賮賰乇丞 丕賱夭賲賳 賵丕賱賵賯鬲 賵丕賱禺賱賵丿貙 賷賯賵賱 賳丕亘丕賰賵賮 :
鈥淚 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.鈥�
賵賱丕 兀卮毓乇 卮禺氐賷丕 亘丕賱賲賱賱 賲賳 賯乇丕亍丞 丕賱锟斤拷賯乇丞 丕賱兀賵賱賶 賲賳 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賵丕賱鬲賷 鬲亘丿兀 亘賴匕丕 丕賱爻胤乇 丕賱亘丿賷毓 賵丕賱噩丕賲毓 賱賲毓丕賳賷 毓丿賷丿丞 :
鈥淭he 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鈥�
賵賱丕 賷丨鬲賵賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮丨爻亘 毓賱賶 乇丐賷丞 賳丕亘丕賰賵賮 丨賵賱 丕賱匕丕賰乇丞貙 賵丕賱卮賵賯貙 賵丕賱丨賳賷賳貙 賵丕賱賲賳賮賶貙 賵丕賱賵胤賳貙 賵丕毓丕丿丞 氐賳丕毓丞 丕賱賲丕囟賷 賵丕賱賴賵賷丞. 亘賱 兀賳賴 賷丨鬲賵賷 毓賱賶 亘毓囟 丌乇丕亍 賳丕亘丕賰賵賮 丕賱睾乇賷亘丞 賵丕賱賮乇賷丿丞 丨賵賱 賲賵丕囟賷毓 賲孬賱 賮賰乇丞 丕賱夭賲賳 賵丕賱賵賯鬲 賵丕賱禺賱賵丿貙 賷賯賵賱 賳丕亘丕賰賵賮 :
鈥淚 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.鈥�
賵賱丕 兀卮毓乇 卮禺氐賷丕 亘丕賱賲賱賱 賲賳 賯乇丕亍丞 丕賱锟斤拷賯乇丞 丕賱兀賵賱賶 賲賳 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賵丕賱鬲賷 鬲亘丿兀 亘賴匕丕 丕賱爻胤乇 丕賱亘丿賷毓 賵丕賱噩丕賲毓 賱賲毓丕賳賷 毓丿賷丿丞 :
鈥淭he 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鈥�
July 24, 2021
Admittedly, I have only read the one Nabakov and we all know which novel I refer to...
Which is of course a classic masterpiece always worth revisiting and reinterpreting critically.
So I had high hopes for this author's memoirs, and that made it for something of a disappointment. The prose is extremely eloquent, worthy of laugh out louds on occasion, and there is no doubt he is a writer of the highest order.
But the subject matter just didn't include what the fan would have hoped. Don't get me wrong, the backstory detailing the social hierarchies of pre-revolution Russia are very fascinating. His privileged lifestyle, which he certainly does "check", and all the idiosyncrasies of his extended family and education and exile in Western Europe.
With even more depth, he talks of the politics of leftists of the era and his father's writing and death and sparse yet clever takes on every minor character of his life... And yet, he doesn't seem to get that real.
He doesn't talk about his own writer's path nearly enough. A few self-deprecating quips about poetry and affairs just are not sufficient.
Most of all, we want more of Lolita. The inspiration, and the fallout of becoming such a novelist of world renown. Furthermore, about emigrating to America and his years of fame.
It is the author's choice to focus on his earlier life, so that is the book we have. Yet if I am being honest, I just want more.
Which is of course a classic masterpiece always worth revisiting and reinterpreting critically.
So I had high hopes for this author's memoirs, and that made it for something of a disappointment. The prose is extremely eloquent, worthy of laugh out louds on occasion, and there is no doubt he is a writer of the highest order.
But the subject matter just didn't include what the fan would have hoped. Don't get me wrong, the backstory detailing the social hierarchies of pre-revolution Russia are very fascinating. His privileged lifestyle, which he certainly does "check", and all the idiosyncrasies of his extended family and education and exile in Western Europe.
With even more depth, he talks of the politics of leftists of the era and his father's writing and death and sparse yet clever takes on every minor character of his life... And yet, he doesn't seem to get that real.
He doesn't talk about his own writer's path nearly enough. A few self-deprecating quips about poetry and affairs just are not sufficient.
Most of all, we want more of Lolita. The inspiration, and the fallout of becoming such a novelist of world renown. Furthermore, about emigrating to America and his years of fame.
It is the author's choice to focus on his earlier life, so that is the book we have. Yet if I am being honest, I just want more.
June 14, 2022
Speak, Memory is a book I read slowly, necessitated both by his intricate sentences, as well to savor their richness. This will one day be a reread, and not the library book I have now returned, but of the hardcover I just ordered.
He sinks then rises the reader, from the past to the present, with his dilations of time. Like a light being intermittently shined on an eye and the pupil expanding and contracting. In real-writing-time, he tries to recall lost and minute details from his self-confessed flawed memory bank, and so both reader and writer discover his lost gems simultaneously. It鈥檚 nice.
Nabokov is one of the rare writers who might be able to write about anything and render it to those without a prior interest in the subject, interesting. He proves my point by spending a considerable amount of time reflecting on moths and insufferable governesses鈥攁s if somehow he knew my two least favourite subjects. Then he goes on to dazzle me; of course in part just because he knows he can. Vlad, you wry Russian, I am entertained. (Just now I鈥檓 wondering to myself if revealing to your audience beauty in the mundane鈥攎oths, governesses鈥攊s perhaps a good definition of an artist. I鈥檓 thinking so. Tell me otherwise.)
I too, like VN, am not a great sleeper and in part because of my eagerness for the next day. I love the hilarity of his dramatic revolt on sleep: I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.
For the exquisiteness of prose, the immersive imagery, as well the analogy deepened with his many years of reflecting on a particular idea, I started copying out for this review the first sentence of the hardcover鈥檚 page 88. But to do it justice, the fair stopping point would be the last sentence of page 88. So, just read page 88鈥攂ut first, read 1-87; then read those that follow.
As in Lolita, there is a scene of an underage girl playing on the beach. But this time the male protagonist joining her is his own underage self from his memories. I wonder, whether acknowledged or not, whether conscious or subconscious, he was righting a wrong (by writing a right鈥攕pot me one wordplay.)
I want to read authors that push. Similar to the line in Blow where Depp says In the end, my ambition exceeded my talents. That鈥檚 laudable. Who I am to critique one of the great prose writers, but I do think Nabokov, who often in this memoir as well in Lolita, most definitely and routinely leaves the page smoking, occasionally oversaturates an idea by pouring it on a little thick. And that鈥檚 fine by me. What writer can walk that perfect line for the entirety of a novel? Prose will inevitably at times be either slightly bland or slightly too rich. I鈥檒l take the latter.
Myself as an author was heartened to hear how long it often takes VN to compose his sentences: 鈥渢he massacrous revisions and rewritings, and new revisions, of the very lines in which I am taking two hours to describe a two-minute run of my father鈥檚 flawless handwriting.鈥� I did not want to read that this legend just sat down at the typewriter and outpoured mastery. He labored too. Good.
A significant part of why I read is to be schooled as an author. I only want to spend my time with great books that may elevate my own efforts. The vast majority of my time is spent writing or trying to improve the craft. I believe this book is one. So in the future, after a third of the way through a mediocre book, I鈥檒l drop it and pick this one back up.
He sinks then rises the reader, from the past to the present, with his dilations of time. Like a light being intermittently shined on an eye and the pupil expanding and contracting. In real-writing-time, he tries to recall lost and minute details from his self-confessed flawed memory bank, and so both reader and writer discover his lost gems simultaneously. It鈥檚 nice.
Nabokov is one of the rare writers who might be able to write about anything and render it to those without a prior interest in the subject, interesting. He proves my point by spending a considerable amount of time reflecting on moths and insufferable governesses鈥攁s if somehow he knew my two least favourite subjects. Then he goes on to dazzle me; of course in part just because he knows he can. Vlad, you wry Russian, I am entertained. (Just now I鈥檓 wondering to myself if revealing to your audience beauty in the mundane鈥攎oths, governesses鈥攊s perhaps a good definition of an artist. I鈥檓 thinking so. Tell me otherwise.)
I too, like VN, am not a great sleeper and in part because of my eagerness for the next day. I love the hilarity of his dramatic revolt on sleep: I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.
For the exquisiteness of prose, the immersive imagery, as well the analogy deepened with his many years of reflecting on a particular idea, I started copying out for this review the first sentence of the hardcover鈥檚 page 88. But to do it justice, the fair stopping point would be the last sentence of page 88. So, just read page 88鈥攂ut first, read 1-87; then read those that follow.
As in Lolita, there is a scene of an underage girl playing on the beach. But this time the male protagonist joining her is his own underage self from his memories. I wonder, whether acknowledged or not, whether conscious or subconscious, he was righting a wrong (by writing a right鈥攕pot me one wordplay.)
I want to read authors that push. Similar to the line in Blow where Depp says In the end, my ambition exceeded my talents. That鈥檚 laudable. Who I am to critique one of the great prose writers, but I do think Nabokov, who often in this memoir as well in Lolita, most definitely and routinely leaves the page smoking, occasionally oversaturates an idea by pouring it on a little thick. And that鈥檚 fine by me. What writer can walk that perfect line for the entirety of a novel? Prose will inevitably at times be either slightly bland or slightly too rich. I鈥檒l take the latter.
Myself as an author was heartened to hear how long it often takes VN to compose his sentences: 鈥渢he massacrous revisions and rewritings, and new revisions, of the very lines in which I am taking two hours to describe a two-minute run of my father鈥檚 flawless handwriting.鈥� I did not want to read that this legend just sat down at the typewriter and outpoured mastery. He labored too. Good.
A significant part of why I read is to be schooled as an author. I only want to spend my time with great books that may elevate my own efforts. The vast majority of my time is spent writing or trying to improve the craft. I believe this book is one. So in the future, after a third of the way through a mediocre book, I鈥檒l drop it and pick this one back up.
November 21, 2008
One of the greatest literary autobiographies ever - a model for how to do it. My favourite anecdote: when he talks about how cold it was in his student room, he denies the rumour that the water in his toothmug froze solid during the night. Just a crisp layer of ice on the top, that he broke with his toothbrush...
June 29, 2018
Il ricordo 猫 a volte traditore, a volte saturo e dovizioso all鈥檌nverosimile; ci sono casi nei quali getta sul nostro passato sguardi labili e instabili come lacrime nella pioggia, ed altri ove ce ne restituisce una arazzo agucchiato con la pi霉 vertiginosa sottigliezza, completo di dettagli e particolari che faticheremmo a discernere ma perfino gi脿 solo a percepire in una scena che descrivessimo dal vivo. E un maestro nell鈥檌mmortalare la memoria 猫 Vladimir Nabokov: nei romanzi, ma anche e soprattutto in questo libro autobiografico; e tuttavia non si tratta mai d鈥檜n esercizio autobiografico pacificato e rasserenante come sanno essere, a volte, perfino le nostalgie d鈥檜na vita altra serena, evocatrici malinconiche delle neiges d鈥檃ntan: il fuoco dell鈥檈silio e l鈥檕cchio dell鈥檈ntomologo impregnano le parole d鈥檜n鈥檜rgenza fredda che emerge in sciabolate di luce: words like violence break the silence. Molti passi mi hanno ricordato la pittura, ma non la pittura classica, nemmeno quella di oggetti, evocatrice fedelissima di metalli trasognati, di carnalit脿 succose, di piumaggi vibratili, di vegetabili turgori, di lucide frenesie floreali: perfino gli strumenti musicali di Evaristo Baschenis, con la propria intatta fedelt脿 organologica fin nei riverberi della vernice d鈥檜n liuto, nello spessore d鈥檜na corda di viola, nella rastrematura d鈥檜n cavigliere, nella cesellatura d鈥檜n pirolo, serbano quello scarto lieve di tinta e luminosit脿 che v鈥檌ncunea un impalpabile ma deciso stacco dalla visione naturale. A me la prosa memorialistica di Nabokov, nel suo scandagliare allucinato e intenso il ricordo, fa pensare agli scorci urbani di Richard Estes o alle nature morte di Ralph Goings, col loro iperrealismo vetroso, la luce d鈥檜n鈥檌ntensit脿 delirante, cos矛 stagliati e a fuoco perfetto da risultare irreali, da ferire lo sguardo: Nabokov possiede un senso tattile della rimembranza, ne restituisce un鈥檌mmagine che 猫 assieme figura e oggetto da toccare avidamente; tutto in lui 猫 al contempo visione, odore, suono, realt脿 solida che si avverte presente fra le dita. Nabokov 猫 un incantatore sinestesico. E intanto sa essere, come sempre, anche sfuggente fino all鈥檌nsolenza, sornione, pungente, beffardo; si diverte col lettore, lo vuole magari ammirato, ma sempre vigile, collaborativo, critico, intelligente: non sa che fare dei lettori pigri. E la Russia, nel mentre, viene a galla fra le nebbie: una Russia eterna e una peculiare, tutta di Nabokov, che con brio malizioso prende a gabbo la Russia eterna degli slavofili e quella dei bolscevichi. Un incantatore sinestesico, ma anche un incantatore acrobata: il Nostro cammina sulle punte tra la fedelt脿 visionaria verso una concretezza dalla densit脿 quasi insostenibile, fard茅e et peinte comme au temps des bergeries, e una levit脿 fuggevole come il manto d鈥檜na farfalla. E infatti parlare della sua prosa 猫 impossibile senza rievocarla per metafore; ma d鈥檃ltronde, non 猫 proprio la metafora ci貌 che rende umano il linguaggio? E cos矛, visioni trapassate feriscono e dileguano. Restano nell鈥檃nimo concrezioni guizzanti d鈥檈saltazione ammirata, frammiste a un sapore languido, evanescente di salato tout en chantant sur le mode mineur: un brivido rattristato e soave, una pioggerella d鈥檃utunno dai sentori vagamente di 蹿辞耻驳猫谤别: e, si sa, rainy days never say goodbye.
August 17, 2018
莽ok 艧谋k, 莽ok asil, 莽ok zarif, 莽ok incelikli, 莽ok estetik, 莽ok鈥ir otobiyografi. ve 枚zg眉n, nabokov鈥檜n e艧siz 眉slubuyla i艧lenmi艧: nabokovca.
枚vg眉ler d眉zmek d谋艧谋nda, yazar谋n ilk hat谋rlar谋ndan yakla艧谋k k谋rk ya艧谋na kadar olan hayat谋ndan izler, daha do臒rusu tablolar-sahneler ta艧谋d谋臒谋n谋 s枚yleyeyim bu otobiyografinin. ge莽mi艧e bakman谋n, ge莽mi艧i canland谋rman谋n yolu, hemen herkeste oldu臒u gibi, nabokov鈥檇a da k眉莽眉k sahnelerden ge莽iyor. unutulan, unutuldu臒u san谋lan zaman dilimleri ve nice olaylar, insanlar bu k眉莽眉k sahneler i莽inde 艧a艧谋rtacak kadar detayla kendilerini g枚steriyorlar. ancak ve ancak nabokov s眉rg眉nle yitirdi臒i vatan谋yla, 莽ocuklu臒um dedi臒i vatan谋yla, vatan谋-莽ocuklu臒unu sadece haf谋zas谋nda ya艧atmak durumunda-zorunda kalmas谋yla herkesten ay谋rl谋yor. 鈥渮amana inanm谋yorum,鈥� diyen nabokov, belki inanamayan nabokov, b枚yle b眉y眉k bir k谋r谋lmayla bak谋yor ge莽mi艧e ve 鈥渟anat谋n lambas谋yla鈥� elbette. 鈥渂eni bi莽imlendiren ayg谋t谋 ne 莽evremde, ne de 谋rsiyetimde bulabiliyorum,鈥� diyor tam olarak, 鈥溍秏r眉me kar谋艧谋k bir filigran bas谋p ge莽en me莽hul merdanenin e艧siz tasar谋m谋, ancak, ya艧am ka臒谋d谋 sanat谋n lambas谋yla ayd谋nlat谋l谋rsa fark edilebiliyor.鈥�
konu艧, haf谋za鈥檡谋 okumak i莽in sebepler s谋ralamaya gerek yok. biyografi-otobiyografi t眉r眉nden beklenen pratik faydalardan da bahsetmemeli hi莽. elbette konu艧 haf谋za okura hayat dersleri vermiyor, yazar谋n anla艧谋lmas谋 zor eserlerine 谋艧谋k da tutmuyor. 枚yle bir kitap de臒il konu艧, haf谋za. ama nabokov 枚zelinde s枚ylemek istedi臒im son bir 艧ey var: konu艧, haf谋za nabokov鈥檜n romanlar谋n谋n g眉c眉n眉-g眉zelli臒ini-b眉y眉kl眉臒眉n眉 tart谋艧mamakla birlikte, genellikle nabokov鈥檜n ki艧ili臒ine ba臒layarak uzak-mesafeli-so臒uk ya da suya sabuna dokunmaz bulan, benim de uzun s眉re aralar谋nda bulundu臒um okurlar i莽in bir yan谋lg谋y谋 fark etme kitab谋 olabilir. o okurlara 枚zellikle tavsiye ederim.
枚vg眉ler d眉zmek d谋艧谋nda, yazar谋n ilk hat谋rlar谋ndan yakla艧谋k k谋rk ya艧谋na kadar olan hayat谋ndan izler, daha do臒rusu tablolar-sahneler ta艧谋d谋臒谋n谋 s枚yleyeyim bu otobiyografinin. ge莽mi艧e bakman谋n, ge莽mi艧i canland谋rman谋n yolu, hemen herkeste oldu臒u gibi, nabokov鈥檇a da k眉莽眉k sahnelerden ge莽iyor. unutulan, unutuldu臒u san谋lan zaman dilimleri ve nice olaylar, insanlar bu k眉莽眉k sahneler i莽inde 艧a艧谋rtacak kadar detayla kendilerini g枚steriyorlar. ancak ve ancak nabokov s眉rg眉nle yitirdi臒i vatan谋yla, 莽ocuklu臒um dedi臒i vatan谋yla, vatan谋-莽ocuklu臒unu sadece haf谋zas谋nda ya艧atmak durumunda-zorunda kalmas谋yla herkesten ay谋rl谋yor. 鈥渮amana inanm谋yorum,鈥� diyen nabokov, belki inanamayan nabokov, b枚yle b眉y眉k bir k谋r谋lmayla bak谋yor ge莽mi艧e ve 鈥渟anat谋n lambas谋yla鈥� elbette. 鈥渂eni bi莽imlendiren ayg谋t谋 ne 莽evremde, ne de 谋rsiyetimde bulabiliyorum,鈥� diyor tam olarak, 鈥溍秏r眉me kar谋艧谋k bir filigran bas谋p ge莽en me莽hul merdanenin e艧siz tasar谋m谋, ancak, ya艧am ka臒谋d谋 sanat谋n lambas谋yla ayd谋nlat谋l谋rsa fark edilebiliyor.鈥�
konu艧, haf谋za鈥檡谋 okumak i莽in sebepler s谋ralamaya gerek yok. biyografi-otobiyografi t眉r眉nden beklenen pratik faydalardan da bahsetmemeli hi莽. elbette konu艧 haf谋za okura hayat dersleri vermiyor, yazar谋n anla艧谋lmas谋 zor eserlerine 谋艧谋k da tutmuyor. 枚yle bir kitap de臒il konu艧, haf谋za. ama nabokov 枚zelinde s枚ylemek istedi臒im son bir 艧ey var: konu艧, haf谋za nabokov鈥檜n romanlar谋n谋n g眉c眉n眉-g眉zelli臒ini-b眉y眉kl眉臒眉n眉 tart谋艧mamakla birlikte, genellikle nabokov鈥檜n ki艧ili臒ine ba臒layarak uzak-mesafeli-so臒uk ya da suya sabuna dokunmaz bulan, benim de uzun s眉re aralar谋nda bulundu臒um okurlar i莽in bir yan谋lg谋y谋 fark etme kitab谋 olabilir. o okurlara 枚zellikle tavsiye ederim.
February 28, 2015
Remember Those Evenings
Reading tonight, he remembers those evenings,
Walking together in the endless estates,
Where the sun poured over shining green leaves.
No hint of shades.
Again in this room, with the screen-light hiding the night,
Look back to those mountains where our walking sticks are hid;
See him turn to the window, thinking his last
Of faraway climes.
Now nights come bringing only doubts, and the dead howl
Of half-formed thoughts, in their windy dwelling
Inside his mind, too full of easy questions;
Such lonely roads.
Oh, my long distance companion, my muse, remember:
How we saw that sudden lighting of the valley;
As we stood alone in the lonely darkening roads, watching
As men went home.
Remember all this, though no nearer each other.
As the night is ending, and the dawn will bring
Dreams and sleep for some, but no peace to me;
Only more dread reading.
September 1, 2022
I'm a big fan of memoir and wanted to like this, since it's considered one of the best. What I take away from it, though, is only a handful of memorable images and lines. I found myself indifferent, at best, to Nabokov as a person, at least what he reveals of himself. The book is a collection of articles on specific, limited topics, focusing heavily on his early childhood, and even though the author heavily revised and rewrote them, they didn't cohere into anything more substantive. I'm glad I read it, but it didn't live up to its reputation, for me.
August 3, 2023
Un 鈥榓utobiografia rivisitata, il sottotitolo dell鈥檕pera, si tratta infatti delle memorie certosine e fiabesche di un vero nobile russo prima di ogni rivoluzione nella terra natia. Compendiano trentasette anni, dal 1903 al 1940, limiti temporali che non coincidono affatto con le canoniche date che racchiudono l鈥檈sistenza mortale, vuoi per l鈥檃nacronia relativa alla prima - Nabokov nacque nel 1899 - vuoi per la seconda che ne anticiperebbe di un bel po鈥� il decesso. La prima data per貌 猫 significativa perch茅 rappresenta lo squarcio praticato dal ricordo nell鈥檕blio generato con la nascita: Nabokov 猫 fermamente convinto che 鈥渓a prigione del tempo 猫 sferica e senza sbocchi鈥�, due le estremit脿 che la confinano appunto, la nascita e la morte dell鈥� individuo, prima e dopo il nulla, nel mezzo il ricordo. Il primo ricordo cosciente dell鈥檃utore si situa dunque intorno ai quattro anni e coincide con la presa di coscienza di avere accanto due esseri che riesce finalmente a identificare chiaramente come i suoi genitori, oltre che come le persone che lo nutrono, lo allevano e gli vogliono bene. La seconda data coincide invece con una rinascita: la partenza dell鈥檈sule eterno dall鈥橢uropa per l鈥橝merica. Se la prima data ha il sapore di un affaccio privilegiato a una vita elitaria, singolare, con la restituzione integrale di un鈥檈poca definitivamente tramontata, la seconda ha invece il limite di coincidere con la parola fine. Mi sarebbe piaciuto conoscere anche l鈥檃ltra vita, quella americana, vero 猫 che i riferimenti ad essa sono continui nel corso delle pagine e danno modo di farsi un鈥檌dea complessiva, resta il fatto che la delusione 猫 stata cocente. Una negazione di s茅 anche se poi, andando a rileggere la prefazione, scopro ci貌 che prima non avrei potuto notare: l鈥檌ntento di Nabokov era quello di proseguire con la narrazione degli anni americani, un intento che quindi non ha il sapore della negazione ma della attenta preparazione : 鈥淯n giorno spero di scrivere uno , Continua a parlare, ricordo, che copra gli anni 1940-1960 passati in America: l鈥檈vaporazione di certi elementi volatili e la fusione di certi metalli proseguono senza sosta nei miei alambicchi e crogioli".
S矛, perch茅 l鈥檃utore di Lolita non lascia niente al caso e la consegna del ricordo avviene dopo infinite revisioni che lo mettono al riparo da errori grossolani, anche cronologici, che il racconto della propria vita non risparmia neanche ad un perfezionista. A partire infatti da episodi situati in qualche regione del suo lobo temporale scandaglia la sua esistenza, anno dopo anno, sfruttando, se pu貌, qualsiasi elemento d鈥檃ppoggio che possa utilizzare come un ricercatore le sue fonti. Il tutto 猫 a netto vantaggio del lettore pi霉 ingenuo che gode del racconto di un鈥檈sistenza da fiaba, del lettore pi霉 documentato che carpisce i segreti di un momento storico, quale quello rivoluzionario russo dal 1905 alla disfatta dei Bianchi in Crimea, godendo intimamente quando si affaccia un giudizio di forte condanna di quel leninismo diventato mito in Europa, per giungere poi al lettore pi霉 importante, quello di Nabokov stesso che regala, a chi ha letto le sue opere, godibilissime riflessioni sull鈥檌ntrecciarsi di ricordo personale e cessione della propria esistenza ai personaggi creati, restituendo in parte anche la genesi delle sue opere. Insomma, una lettura per tutti in compagnia delle sue immancabili farfalle, Nabokov era un entomologo d鈥檈ccezione, una pecca in questo cameo che mal si sposa con le sofferenze dei cari e rari lepidotteri spillati e all鈥檕dor di naftalina di cui andava tanto fiero.
S矛, perch茅 l鈥檃utore di Lolita non lascia niente al caso e la consegna del ricordo avviene dopo infinite revisioni che lo mettono al riparo da errori grossolani, anche cronologici, che il racconto della propria vita non risparmia neanche ad un perfezionista. A partire infatti da episodi situati in qualche regione del suo lobo temporale scandaglia la sua esistenza, anno dopo anno, sfruttando, se pu貌, qualsiasi elemento d鈥檃ppoggio che possa utilizzare come un ricercatore le sue fonti. Il tutto 猫 a netto vantaggio del lettore pi霉 ingenuo che gode del racconto di un鈥檈sistenza da fiaba, del lettore pi霉 documentato che carpisce i segreti di un momento storico, quale quello rivoluzionario russo dal 1905 alla disfatta dei Bianchi in Crimea, godendo intimamente quando si affaccia un giudizio di forte condanna di quel leninismo diventato mito in Europa, per giungere poi al lettore pi霉 importante, quello di Nabokov stesso che regala, a chi ha letto le sue opere, godibilissime riflessioni sull鈥檌ntrecciarsi di ricordo personale e cessione della propria esistenza ai personaggi creati, restituendo in parte anche la genesi delle sue opere. Insomma, una lettura per tutti in compagnia delle sue immancabili farfalle, Nabokov era un entomologo d鈥檈ccezione, una pecca in questo cameo che mal si sposa con le sofferenze dei cari e rari lepidotteri spillati e all鈥檕dor di naftalina di cui andava tanto fiero.
August 9, 2012
Speak, Mnemosyne!
Probably one of my favorite autobiographies to date (beaten only perhaps by the ). Realistically, it is 4.56 stars given the narrative gaps (most were written as individual pieces for Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker and Harpers). The section on butterflies (Chapter 6), his Russian education (Chapter 9), and his portrait of his mother (Chapter 2) were absolutely AMAZING. Other chapters were just as good, and only a couple were less than what I hoped. It is interesting to think of Nabokov writing these in English in Massachusetts from his Russian memories and then translating them in the 1950s back into Russian and then using the Russian version to edit a new edition in 1966. The human mind, with all its varieties, is an phenomenal thing...but Nabokov's mind and the prose it produces makes me want to just lay down and lick the back of my own head in jealousy.
Probably one of my favorite autobiographies to date (beaten only perhaps by the ). Realistically, it is 4.56 stars given the narrative gaps (most were written as individual pieces for Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker and Harpers). The section on butterflies (Chapter 6), his Russian education (Chapter 9), and his portrait of his mother (Chapter 2) were absolutely AMAZING. Other chapters were just as good, and only a couple were less than what I hoped. It is interesting to think of Nabokov writing these in English in Massachusetts from his Russian memories and then translating them in the 1950s back into Russian and then using the Russian version to edit a new edition in 1966. The human mind, with all its varieties, is an phenomenal thing...but Nabokov's mind and the prose it produces makes me want to just lay down and lick the back of my own head in jealousy.
January 24, 2018
Rich...figuratively (the prose), and literally (the bourgeois memoir). I can see why the docile Western mainstream literary world lapped it up. I started reading this a while back, so I thought I should finish it. That is all.
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