 First UK edition | |
| Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz (1951 UK) |
Speak, Memory is a memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. The book includes individual essays published between 1936 and 1951 to create the first edition in 1951. Nabokov's revised and extended edition appeared in 1966.
The book is dedicated to his wife, Véra, and covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg and at their country estate Vyra, near Siverskaya. The three remaining chapters recall his years at Cambridge and as part of the Russian émigré community in Berlin and Paris. Through memory Nabokov is able to possess the past. [1]
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
— Speak, Memory, the opening line
Nabokov published "Mademoiselle O", which became Chapter Five of the book, in French in 1936, and in English in The Atlantic Monthly in 1943, without indicating that it was non-fiction. Subsequent pieces of the autobiography were published as individual or collected stories, with each chapter able to stand on its own. Andrew Field observed that while Nabokov evoked the past through "puppets of memory" (in the characterizations of his educators, Colette, or Tamara, for example), his intimate family life with Véra and Dmitri remained "untouched". [2] Field indicated that the chapter on butterflies is an interesting example how the author deploys the fictional with the factual. It recounts, for example, how his first butterfly escapes at Vyra, in Russia, and is "overtaken and captured" forty years later on a butterfly hunt in Colorado.
The book's opening line, "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," is arguably a paraphrase of Thomas Carlyle's "One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities," found in Carlyle's 1840 lecture "The Hero as Man of Letters", published in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History in 1841. There is also a similar concept expressed in On the nature of things by the Roman Poet Lucretius. [ citation needed ] The line is parodied at the start of Little Wilson and Big God , the autobiography of the English writer Anthony Burgess. "If you require a sententious opening, here it is. Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now." [3]
Nabokov writes in the text that he was dissuaded from titling the book Speak, Mnemosyne by his publisher, who feared that readers would not buy a "book whose title they could not pronounce". It was first published in a single volume in 1951 as Speak, Memory in the United Kingdom and as Conclusive Evidence in the United States. The Russian version was published in 1954 and called Drugie berega (Other Shores). An extended edition including several photographs was published in 1966 as Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. In 1999 Alfred A. Knopf issued a new edition with the addition of a previously unpublished section titled "Chapter 16". [4]
There are variations between the individually published chapters, the two English versions, and the Russian version. Nabokov, having lost his belongings in 1917, wrote from memory, and explains that certain reported details needed corrections; thus the individual chapters as published in magazines and the book versions differ. Also, the memoirs were adjusted to either the English- or Russian-speaking audience. It has been proposed that the ever-shifting text of his autobiography suggests that "reality" cannot be "possessed" by the reader, the "esteemed visitor", but only by Nabokov himself. [2]
Nabokov had planned a sequel under the title Speak on, Memory or Speak, America. He wrote, however, a fictional autobiographic memoir of a double persona, Look at the Harlequins!, apparently being upset by a real biography published by Andrew Field. [5]
The chapters were individually published as follows—in the New Yorker , unless otherwise indicated:
The book was instantly called a masterpiece by the literary world. [7] In 2011, Time Magazine listed the book among the 100 All-TIME non-fiction books indicating that its "impressionist approach deepens the sense of memories relived through prose that is gorgeous, rich and full". [8] Joseph Epstein lists Nabokov's book among the few truly great autobiographies. [9] While he opines that it is odd that so great a writer as Nabokov has not been able to generate passion in his readers for his own greatest passion, chess and butterflies, he finds that the autobiography succeeds "at making a reasonable pass at understanding that greatest of all conundrums, its author's own life". [9] Jonathan Yardley writes that the book is witty, funny and wise, "at heart it is … deeply humane and even old-fashioned", with an "astonishing prose". [10] He indicates that while any autobiography is "inherently an act of immodesty", the real subject is the development of the inner and outer self, an act that can plunge the subject into "the abyss of self". [10] Richard Gilbert, who finds the long genealogical histories tedious, notes that Nabokov apparently bullied his younger brother and "doesn't pretend to guilt he doesn't feel", nor is he asking for sympathy when his idyllic world is crushed by the Russian revolution. [7]
Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. Nabokov wrote Pale Fire in 1960–61, after the success of Lolita had made him financially independent, allowing him to retire from teaching and return to Europe. It was commenced in Nice and completed in Montreux, Switzerland.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was an expatriate Russian and Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
Pnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States launched Nabokov's career into literary prominence. Its eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born assistant professor in his 50s living in the United States, whose character is believed to be based partially on the life of both Nabokov's colleague Marc Szeftel as well as on Nabokov himself. Exiled by the Russian Revolution and what he calls the "Hitler war", Pnin teaches Russian at the fictional Waindell College, loosely inspired by Cornell University and Wellesley College—places where Nabokov himself taught.
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.
Nabokov's Congeries was a collection of work by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1968 and reprinted in 1971 as The Portable Nabokov. Because Nabokov supervised its production less than a decade before he died, it is useful in attempting to identify which works Nabokov considered to be his best, especially among his short stories.
The Gift is Vladimir Nabokov's final Russian novel, and is considered to be his farewell to the world he was leaving behind. Nabokov wrote it between 1935 and 1937 while living in Berlin, and it was published in serial form under his pen name, Vladimir Sirin.
Brian David Boyd is a professor of literature known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on literature and evolution. He is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Mary is the debut novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first published under the pen name V. Sirin in 1926 by Russian-language publisher "Slovo".
Nabokov's Dozen (1958) a collection of 13 short stories by Vladimir Nabokov previously published in American magazines.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939 in Paris and first published in 1941. A work centred on language and its inability to convey any satisfactory definition, it has been identified as a forerunner of the postmodernist novel.
The Defense is the third novel written by Vladimir Nabokov after he had immigrated to Berlin. It was first published in Russian 1930 and later in English in 1964.
Nabokov House is a house in Saint Petersburg with the modern street number of 47 Great Morskaya Street, 190000. In 1897, the mansion became the property of the liberal statesman and jurist Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, and as such the house hosted many important political meetings, including the final session of the National Congress of Zemstvos (1904).
Look at the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.
Véra Yevseyevna Nabokova was the wife, editor, and translator of Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, and a source of inspiration for many of his works.
"Mademoiselle O" is a memoir by Vladimir Nabokov about his eccentric Swiss-French governess.
"The Aurelian" is a short story first written in Russian as Pil'gram by Vladimir Nabokov during his exile in Berlin in 1930. After translation by Nabokov and Peter Pertzov it was published in English in The Atlantic Monthly in 1941. The Aurelian is included in Nine Stories and Nabokov's Dozen.
This is a list of works by writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov that addresses the controversial subject of hebephilia. The protagonist is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He describes his obsession with a 12-year-old "nymphet", Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.
The Rozhdestveno Memorial Estate is a writer's house museum and park near Siverskaya, Gatchinsky District, Leningrad Oblast, that commemorates the most famous owner of the estate, Vladimir Nabokov; the Batovo and Vyra estates, also immortalized by Nabokov, are nearby. As Nabokov spent part of his youth at Vyra, he visited his grandmother at Batovo and his uncle at Rozhdestveno. The Batovo mansion burned down in 1925, Vyra was destroyed in 1944, leaving Rozhdestveno as the sole survivor of the triad of estates owned by the Nabokov family.
Sergey Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian poet and pedagogue. He died in a Nazi concentration camp located in Neuengamme. He was brother to Vladimir Nabokov.
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