Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited

By Vladimir Nabokov

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. • "Scintillating … One finds here amazing glimpses into the life of a world that has vanished forever." —The New York Times

Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307787736

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov (San Petersburgo, 1899-Montreux, 1977), uno de los más extraordinarios escritores del siglo XX, nació en el seno de una acomodada familia aristocrática. En 1919, a consecuencia de la Revolución Rusa, abandonó su país para siempre. Tras estudiar en Cambridge, se instaló en Berlín, donde empezó a publicar sus novelas en ruso con el seudónimo de V. Sirin. En 1937 se trasladó a París, y en 1940 a los Estados Unidos, donde fue profesor de literatura en varias universidades. En 1960, gracias al gran éxito comercial de Lolita, pudo abandonar la docencia, y poco después se trasladó a Montreux, donde residió, junto con su esposa Véra, hasta su muerte. En Anagrama se le ha dedicado una «Biblioteca Nabokov» que recoge una amplísima muestra de su talento narrativo. En «Compactos» se han publicado los siguientes títulos: Mashenka, Rey, Dama, Valet, La defensa, El ojo, Risa en la oscuridad, Desesperación, El hechicero, La verdadera vida de Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pnin, Pálido fuego, Habla, memoria, Ada o el ardor, Invitado a una decapitación y Barra siniestra; La dádiva, Cosas transparentes, Una belleza rusa, El original de Laura y Gloria pueden encontrarse en «Panorama de narrativas», mientras que sus Cuentos completos están incluidos en la colección «Compendium». Opiniones contundentes, por su parte, ha aparecido en «Argumentos».

Reviews for Speak, Memory

[marse_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nabokov's memoirs of his early years, "Speak Memory" is a beautiful book. His way with language is like watching honey pour out of a jar, slow and graceful, dense, yet translucent. He lived a privileged life and the moments he dwells on are little jewels.

[cherry_red186 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book changed my reading habits entirely - slowing me right down. I often put it aside, sometimes for weeks, yet still I was engaged with it. Nabokov's style is so beautifully considered and playful that it was just more satisfying than other books - like chocolate mousse!There are typical Nabokov surprises and omissions. He portrays his parents, tutors, brother and servants in great detail, butterflies and chess at length. So I was not prepared for the sudden appearance of sisters, speeding down a country lane in a motor car - this was three quarters of the way through the book (almost) without any previous mention. But they roar past and are gone for good. Speak, memory has cast a lasting spell on me it seems. A year since finishing it, I remember much more about it than books I read last week. Delicious!

[eoin-311239 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Justifiably the gold standard of modern memoir. Difficult, honest, and richly beautiful it is worth it for any of the thumbnail biographies of distant family members.

[ericcostello-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Slow in spots, but where Nabakov engages you, he can be quite compelling and interesting. It's not necessary to know Russian history to read this, though some of the allusions will become a bit clearer if you do. I would recommend this.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In these fifteen essays, Vladimir Nabokov covers personal, and familial territory traversing his first forty years up to his emigration to America in 1940. Those were varied years. From a childhood of opulence in St. Petersburg, his family was reduced both monetarily and personally by the upheaval in Russian following the 1917 revolution. His important and influential father was assassinated in Berlin in 1922. His younger brother died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945. But these are merely markers in a life filled with incident and history. Perhaps more interesting is Vladimir’s reflections on his boyhood, his education (via tutors, and latterly schools, eventually attending Cambridge University), his profound passion for lepidoptery, and later for poetry. Throughout, one is struck by his singular experience, which may have been substantially different from that of other forced émigrés. And ever and always it comes back to his languorous prose. It almost doesn’t matter the subject of any particular chapter. It is all so delicious to read.This is not a systematic autobiography. Each of the chapters contained herein was published separately in various journals only to be collected later as a ’kind of’ autobiography. This explains the literary aspect of much of the writing, which is forced to entice and appeal in its own right quite apart from a readers specific interest in the man who would later become such a famous author. As such, Speak, Memory fully justifies the label of literary autobiography. It may well be read and appreciated even apart from Nabokov’s novels. But more likely it will inspire readers to return to the novels which have the roots in such rich soil.Recommended.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Nabokov writes an excellent memoir that plays with time just as his _Ada_ does. Gives one insight into his writing, his fascination with butterflies/chess.

[idiotgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Audible. Childhood memory. Before the revolution. Most of the focus there. Gets weird w address to wife and child. The really interesting chapter is the last one that talks about the history of the book. Layer upon layer of artifice w memory. Especially intrigued by the final sentence about the index. I'll have to "read" rather than "listen" to the book I guess. Intriguing take on memory. Definitely recommend.

[msarki_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I did not like the autobiography so it gets one star, but because it was exquisitely written it gets another star to boot. But that doesn't make the book good or very much fun to read. It was similar to orally having to swallow some very disgusting-tasting medicine. And I am really not sure why I had such an aversion to this work of genius (or so they say). There might be something triggering a feeling for me against those of us who are entitled, or think we are, who carry a mantle of higher power not elected but dictated to us instead.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had real hope for this book after its first sentence, which started it off at 5 stars:“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.”Nabokov’s language in his autobiography is sometimes exquisite, but unfortunately, he’s not for me. His focus always seems to center on form as opposed to content, and I’m left thinking, oh, if only he had even a teaspoon of passion!Nabokov was the son of affluence whose family lost everything fleeing the Bolsheviks, and later he had to flee the Nazis, though neither of these events are described in much detail here. He had private tutors and learned multiple languages at an early age. Perhaps his position in society is best captured in this line: “I would ascertain which of our two cars, the Benz or the Wolseley, was there to take me to school.” Or in another part of the book, when he describes the daughter of the coachman: “I was even more afraid of being revolted by her dirt-caked feet and stale-smelling clothes than of insulting her by the triteness of quasi-seignioral advances.” Ah, such a romantic devil, and man of the people.I liked the photographs sprinkled throughout the book, and it’s certainly a good-looking family - the one of his 35 year old father holding him at age 7, the shot of his brothers and sisters when he was 19 (and Olga was 15), and the passport photo of his wife Vera, and son Dimitri at 5 are all quite nice.I did not like his rambling about his family tree – chapter 3 is a complete snooze, until he delivers this 5 star passage at the very end:“I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window. Its reflection fills the oval mirror above the leathern couch where my uncle sits, gloating over a tattered book. A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.”Wow. And that’s what’s maddening to me about Nabokov. Such talent, such gifts. He occasionally produces brilliant description of ordinary events, such as this one of his rotund governess sitting down:“And now she sits down, or rather she tackles the job of sitting down, the jelly of her jowl quaking, her prodigious posterior, with the three buttons on the side, lowering itself warily; then, at the last second, she surrenders her bulk to the wicker armchair, which, out of sheer fright, bursts into a salvo of crackling.”Unfortunately, there is just not enough of these to recommend the book. I may be harsh and raise eyebrows to say it, given the book’s immense popularity and standing with both professional critics and readers on LT, but to me these are the musings of a prig. And there’s nothing Nabokov seems to like more than to attack authors whose focus is the reverse, on passion as opposed to literary form, which is another sore point with me. Can’t you just feel the egotistical rising of his voice in his italicization of the word ‘my’ in this line: “…[he] was an authority on Dickens, and besides Flaubert, prized highly Stendhal, Balzac and Zola, three detestable mediocrities from my point of view.”I smiled at this passage, in which I think he captures the problem himself:“I used to sit up far into the night, surrounded by an almost Quixotic accumulation of unwieldy volumes, and make polished and rather sterile Russian poems not so much out of the live cells of some compelling emotion as around a vivid term or a verbal image that I wanted to use for its own sake.” Yep.

[jimmychanga · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars.

Many years ago, I had read about half of Lolita before putting it down. I don’t remember why, since I enjoyed the extremely pleasing sentences at the time. Nevertheless, I have not read any Nabokov since then, and everyone seems to be personally insulted by this omission. What is it that inspires Nabokov fans to froth at the mouth so violently when it comes to this topic?

I was promised that this book will let me into the secret. So I feel like even though 3.5 stars is not a bad score, anything less than 5 stars is an insult to the incredible reputation this has built up in my mind (as well as the formidable expectations of said recommenders).

In a way, I can totally see why people love him so much. It is hard not to be floored by the considerable talents of this prose. The sentences, at their best, are indeed delicious. Nabokov seems to me all about the sensual enjoyment of language, within a certain framework of description: Closed inside shutters, a lighted candle, Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, something-something little child, the child kneeling on the pillow that presently would engulf his humming head. -- p. 86But he isn’t always as good when it comes to bigger ideas or psychology. In fact, he has little interest in either, and when he attempts them, it often has the scent of obvious melodramatic effort to it, like bad poetry:All is still, spellbound, enthralled by the moon, fancy’s rearvision 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. --p.100Like a butterfly’s unintuitively wild flight, his sentences go all over the place, and beautifully so. But his is almost the opposite of another sentence-master: Beckett. Whereas Beckett’s sentences can float like a butterfly, they also know how to sting like a bee. It can be beautiful or ugly, long or short, totally taking you off guard with its uncompromising and singular vision. Nabokov is never cruel enough in his economy, his flourishes take too long, and by the time he lands that final punch, it feels overdone, like a rubbery egg. Yes, beautiful, but heavy with labor, dripping with intention.

Perhaps it is unfair to compare him to Beckett, who afterall, has no aesthetic similarities to Nabokov. Maybe Flaubert, then, whose sentences are also beautiful in a certain traditional way, but whose economy and clarity constantly stuns and surprises with layer upon layer of psychological subtlety and humor. Clearly painstaking effort was put in the writing, and yet this effort is also hidden from the reader, so that it looks easy... natural, even. Or maybe we should bring in someone who is equally enamoured by the beauty and playful potential of language, someone like Wallace Stevens, whose words have a certain surface sheen, yet hold so many more implications beneath their enticing veneers, so much philosophical depth.

Nabokov’s strength is in impressionistic description, and in evocation. When he tries to do more, it is very hit and miss. He is like one of those guitar virtuosos getting carried away by their own flashy fingerwork, capable and impressive, but rarely are their technical skills used with the kind of artistic restraint that creates truly great songs. Of course, I am only basing this on this one book alone, so upon further reading, revisions may be in order.

That said, there were many memorable moments in this book. I didn’t truly get into it until Chapter 4, but boy was that chapter good. Chapter 5 was also great, about Mademoiselle. Chapter 14, about emigrant life, and chess puzzles, and where the stylization seemed less pronounced, was also interesting. Most of the book concerns itself with the many tutors, servants and other people who worked for and revolved around his aristocratic family; his interest in butterflies, writing poems, and wooing girls comes up later. Then social upheaval and fleeing the country. I found his voice a bit snobby and egotistical at times, which was also a turn-off. But most of the book was enjoyable enough, though nowhere near the heights they reached in my hype-induced imagination.

[chrissie3-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is amazing, not for the story it tells but for how that story is written. It consists of essays written and published at different times and places, but it all holds together. Each chapter follows the other in basically chronological order. Let the author speak for himself:For the present final edition of Speak Memory I have not only introduced basic changes and copious additions into the initial English text, but have availed myself of the corrections I made while turning it into Russian. This re-Englishing of a Russian reversion 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 metamorphoses, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried by any human before.The book covers the years from his birth in 1899 to 1940, when he, his wife and son immigrated to the US. It begins with his Russian boyhood, followed by his émigré years in Europe. It covers his tutors, his passion for butterflies, a bit about his synesthesia, his coming-of –age, his first girlfriends, his writing and poetry. You clearly understand where he came from, but that is NOT the glory of the book. What is astonishingly good is how he describes memories. What a vocabulary! Words, words and more words. Adjectives and unusual verbal constructions. It is magical. If you want simple wording, I guess this is not for you though.Since what is so stupendous about the book is the writing, I must offer you another sample. It is at the end of the book when he is soon off to America on an ocean liner. He is walking with his wife and six year-old son up a path in a park in Paris, and they spot the boat:What I really remember about this neutrally blooming design( the park) is its clever thematic connection with transatlantic gardens and parks. For suddenly as we came to the end of its path you and I (his wife) saw something that we did not immediately point out to our child, so as to enjoy in full the blissful shock the enchantment and glee he would experience on discovering ahead the ungenuinely gigantic, the unrealistically real prototype of the various toy vessels he dottled about in his bath. There in front of us, where a broken row of house stood between us and the harbor and where the eye encountered all sorts of stratagems, such as pale blue and pink underwear cake-walking on a clothesline or a ladies bicycle and a striped cat oddly sharing a rudimentary balcony of cast iron, it was most satisfying to make out among the jumbled angles of roofs and walls a splendid ship’s funnel showing from behind the clothesline as something in a scrambled picture. Find what the sailor has hidden that the finder cannot un-see once it has been seen. I am writing what I have listened to in the audiobook version of this book, which is well narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, in a deep tone perfect for Nabokov’s words. The narration has just the right pomp!I LOVED the book, but it might not be for everyone.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Russian author, famous for his poetic style, wrote this autobiography about the first few decades of his life. There’s no strict format, instead Nabokov reminisces about his childhood and shares morsels about his books, but it’s the language more than the content that stands out. His descriptions and prose are so vivid that it’s easy to imagine yourself chasing after butterflies along side him. Though the book isn’t long, don’t expect a quick read. The author’s nostalgic meanderings make for a leisurely pace. His memories can be very detailed at times, though he always maintains an elegant aloofness in his imagery. Bits about his life as a lepidopterist and his interpretation of the alphabet as a variety of colors were particularly entertaining. BOTTOM LINE: Nabokov’s lovely writing makes this autobiography interesting, but I wish I’d read his complete catalogue of work before diving into this one. It’s a must for avid fans of his work, but I would recommend starting with his fiction. “Nothing’s sweeter or stranger than to ponder those first thrills. They belong to a harmonious world of a perfect childhood.”  

[librarianbryan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Great style can sometimes overshadow substance. If what the author is really trying to say becomes obscured by games he playing with his form, perhaps he needs to go back to the drawing board. Literature and chess are not the same thing. The implications of Nabokov's life, or the Russian Revolution, cannot be dreamed away by poesy about sunsets while butterfly hunting.Pale Fire remains for me so intellectually engrossing I'd like to read more of his novels in the future though.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent autobiography/memoir. Written with candor and sensitivity, so inherent to Nabokov's style. Apart from thorough exploration of his roots and account of his boyhood and then life in exile, he has a sober take on Bolshevism and the start of Soviet empire. Besides writing, his passions were butterfly collection (since early childhood, in the idyllic country estate of his parents) and chess playing. I would have wished to read more about his wife Vera, she is just lovingly addressed in the book (it is dedicated to her) but not dwelt upon.

[nog_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Provides some insight into Nabokov's character, which isn't the most gracious when it comes to talking about other authors. Unfortunately, his index is inadequate when it comes to author names. You can look up his references to Tolstoy, but not Stendhal, whom he calls "mediocre" somewhere. The emphasis is on his boyhood, with the 18 years spent in London, Berlin, and Paris given spotty attention. I found myself wondering why he would wait until 1937 to leave Hitler's Germany, given his pronouncements regarding totalitarian states and the fact that his wife Vera was Jewish.

[amydross · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to like this more than I did... Of course Nabokov can render a gorgeous sentence like few others, but as for content, much of this book seemed humorless and self-indulgent. There were lovely moments, vivid evocations of character and place, but also too much that was simply dull and repetitive. Maybe it's my own failing, but I just can't bring myself to care enough about butterflies and chess.

[niecierpek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I started reading it, because I read a fragment of it in an anthology and loved it. In the end though, it was very slow. Some fragments and insights are absolutely beautiful and brilliant, while other parts rather unengaging. The style is also very similar to the style of other writers born in that part of Europe. Many of the ones who come to my mind were, or are, Polish from the territories that now constitute separate countries of Ukraine, Lithuania or Latvia. Especially writers like Iwaszkiewicz, Milosz, and Konwicki share the same convention of lyrical, introspective and philosophizing prose. There are fragments in this memoir, though, I know I will be coming back to again and again.