Rating: 
Summary: Reading this book is a sublime experience.
Review: "Speak Memory" is an autobiography, but it's an autobiography like none other. Although it does include factual information about the writer, it is mostly an account of how Nabokov has made sense of his life. His interpretation of his life has left him without bitterness or blame...or even disappointment at having lost everything as a young man when his world was turned upside down by the Russian revolution. Nabokov treats his own life as a work of art. The writing is so graceful it is soothing to read. I first read this book in 1971 when I was an 18 year old college freshmen, and I loved it then. I was inspired to read it again after recently reading Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Although Nafisi claims to be a Nabokov scholar, she seems to have learned nothing from him. Like Nabokov, Nafisi was born into a privileged life which was turned upside down when her native country undergoes revolution. Nabokov tells us that his losses made it possible to have a richer, more meaningful life. Nafisi cannot stop whining about her losses, even though they are far less severe than Nabokov's. She is overwhelmed by self-pity and bitterness. She expresses contempt toward her less "sophisticated" countrymen and their vulnerablity to the appeal of the Ayatollah, but she fails to see the failures of her own economic and social class. I'd choose Nabokov over reading about Nabokov anyday.
Rating: 
Summary: What theme, what unity, where is the sanity of this book...
Review: 4.5 stars Chapter three is the reason for the -.5 "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 Speak, Memory is about the struggle against time for immortality. This struggle is against non-existence. Nabokov tries to preserve as much of his existence as he can through his memories. The "darkness," Time, devours every scrap of a person, throwing him into a sort of an exile from living that is completely without hope-Oblivion. There is no glimmer in this darkness; no path of escape. Nabokov fears this darkness. He weaves a cocoon for himself through his writing. His autobiography is his solution to the darkness. It is to be the salvation of his essence, since his physical form cannot endure for eternity.
Nabokov starts by addressing the theme of his autobiography-existence-by telling a story about a chronophobiac he once knew. This is when he takes his stand and defies the later "eternit[y] of darkness" (19). "The cradle rocks above an abyss...our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading...a young chronophobiac...caught glimpse...of a brand-new baby carriage...his very bones had disintegrated...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...I rebel against this state of affairs. I feel the urge to take my rebellion outside and picket nature" (19, 20). This passage clearly shows that Nabokov will not be the chronophobiac, who simply panics and does nothing. Nabokov fears the dark, but he is going to do everything to defend himself against it He knows that once he dies, he falls prey to the later of the "two eternities of darkness" (19). He knows that death is inevitable, but he will resist the darkness by beginning to build his fortress for immortality. He is going to combat the darkness, not go softly into the cold, silent night.
Nabokov, in fighting against the darkness, realizes that he must do so alone. To keep from vanishing, Nabokov rigorously keeps watch over darkness by himself. He trusts only himself. He left a rare pupae with a local doctor once. The doctor lost the pupae. From this, Nabokov's distrust in relying upon others increases. Nabokov trusts nobody with his biography, because he believes nobody but he can write it correctly. He wants his memories to be his and not that which others twist it into, as Mademoiselle often tries to do. He is afraid that the moment he turns his back he will vanish like a comet-leaving nothing but a vague feeling behind.
Nabokov sees the "...horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought with a finite existence" (297). Consciousness and the ability to think is something which Nabokov holds dear. To make sure that he is alive, he takes inventory of his life. He checks to make sure that he is awake and experiencing Life. Once sure he is sure that he is alive, he realizes Life's fragility and vigilantly guards it against the darkness; afraid that eternal night will steal all that he is. He has had many cherished things vanish. So, he is distrustful because he knows that a moment is all it takes for anything to be destroyed. When Nabokov left his gynandromorphy butterfly and his series of Large Whites on a chair, for example, it took but a moment for his nurse to sit and crush them. In an instant, the collection that had taken him days perhaps weeks to put together is ruined. In a moment too, Colette vanishes from his life. Colette, who was so animated and beautiful, turns into nothing but a "whisp of iridescence" that exists now only in Nabokov's memories. Many of Nabokov's tutors and friends die abruptly in the war, and the war forces Nabokov to hastily leave Russia. Nabokov's family do not have time to take everything with them because of how fast they had to leave. What took his family generations to build up, their feelings of security, their wealth, and their status, are gone. Nabokov has had many bad experiences, most of which occurred within a very short time period. One of the best illustrations of this is the death of his heroic father not by a duel, but by assassination.
Though iridescence vanishes, Nabokov is able to reap something from the memory he has of Colette. When Nabokov remembers Colette, he sees a swirl of color. This is similar to the color found inside the glass marble-the swirl of color that is frozen and constant. It is animated even though the swirls no longer move because the swirls were caught mid-action. Nabokov cannot rewind time and have his life play and repeat forever. Nabokov cannot prevent physical death. What he can do is not "have not existed." He can pause himself like the swirls in the marble. He defines his essence and gives it a name the same way he does Eupithecia nabokovi. He classifies himself, his life, by describing every memory and thought that he can, and calls it "that [which] the finder cannot unsee once it has been seen" (310).
Describing his life gives him a more fluid form than were he to list facts about himself. Both rubrics cube and the swirled marble hold colors and both are more than just a simple box or sphere. It is the marble only, which contains frozen movement. Nabokov describes his life using prose and nature. He could have written the entire book as he did Chapter Three, but that kind of a writing style would not appeal as much to as wide of an audience as nature and rich prose do.
"Now and then, shed by a blossoming tree, a petal would come own, down, down, and with the odd feeling of seeing something neither worshiper nor casual spectator ought to see, one would manage to glimpse its reflection which swiftly-more swiftly than the petal fell-rose to meet it; and, for the fraction of a second, one feared that the trick would not work, that the blessed oil would not catch fire, that the reflection might miss and the petal float away alone, but every time the delicate union did take place, with the magic precision of a poet's word meeting halfway his, or a reader's recollection" (271). Nabokov wants to make sure that his audience departs with what he is trying to convey-his ideas, himself. The petal is Nabokov, the "float down" is similar to death (the petals die after falling), the reflection is the water is the audience, and the reflection is the reflection of Nabokov's essence. Nabokov wants the world, his audience, to catch him as he falls, to preserve him and reflect exactly what he sees himself as being. He worries that when he finishes falling, that the trick will not work. He is afraid that the petal will float away alone, the reflection lost somewhere in the stream. The "magic" connection is vital to Nabokov's preservation. He wants to immortalize his memories, his thoughts, himself. To accomplish this, other people must remember him as he sees himself. He must be able to clearly convey what's in his mind. The more people who remember him, understand him, and relate to him, the longer he will last. Writing about his life while using imagery from everyday life and nature is part of what Nabokov uses to ensure his preservation. The reason for this being that most people have seen some of nature and can imagine the feeling he is expressing through his imagery. Nabokov's autobiography stays alive when it is preserved in nature because nature is living. The butterflies drifting amongst a sea of grass, the caterpillar stretching to see where its leaf went, all of these are in action. Writing about nature and life in prose serves to further add to this living feeling because prose is melodious and varies. So rather than kill his life by turning it into a list of facts and dates, Nabokov is able to seal it in a sort of biosphere, keeping everything inside his autobiography alive.
The last sentence of Nabokov's Speak, Memory is the summary of why he wrote his autobiography the way he did. He does not necessarily want the reader to remember the chess compositions, his huge family tree, nor his every butterfly and moth catch. He wants them to remember him. He does not write his life like a shopping list, but tells it. He forms a scene with different memories, but the thing that he wants his audience to remember is essence.
"There, in front of us, where a broken row of houses stood between us and the harbor, and where the eye encountered all orts of stratagems, such as pale-blue and pink underwear cakewalking along a clothesline, or a lady's 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 unsee once it has been seen" (309, 310). Nabokov is the Sailor. Page 121 is the only other page in Speak, Memory during which t
Rating:
Summary: Illuminating
Review: A guided tour of Nabokov's refined, humane sensibility: this book will make you think hard about love, human idiosyncrasy, and the role of aesthetics in our lives. There is no arrogance here, merely an un-American reserve that avoids the sanctimonious self-promotion of the talk-show and the newspaper column. Read it--it's worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: eloquent but not very revealing ...
Review: About halfway through Speak, Memory I came to the conclusion that it was the most unrevealing autobiography I'd ever read. Now that I've finished the book, I'd like to modify this conclusion only insofar as the word unrevealing may be taken in a pejorative sense -- I feel now that this description may be, in this case, almost beside the point. It is an exercise in nostalgia -- if that word, too, can be used in a non-pejorative sense -- or a musical piece performed on the plucked strings of memory; it is not a confession, a self-expose, a coming-of-age story, an intellectual investigation, a tale, or, perhaps, even a narrative. It is like Proust without the vulnerability. It is a work of art whose essential aim varies little from that of a family scrapbook or photo album.
Rating:
Summary: What is it about Nabokov?Part of why he might've wrote this.
Review: Another beautiful and fragile part of Nabokov’s life is Colette. Like the butterflies which were sat upon by Nabokov’s nurse, Colette too, is abruptly gone (152). Colette, who was so animated and beautiful, turns into nothing but a “whisp of iridescence” that exists now only in Nabokov’s memories. Though iridescence vanishes, Nabokov is able to reap something from the memory he has of Colette. When Nabokov remembers Colette, he sees a swirl of color. This is similar to the color found inside the glass marble—the swirl of color that is preserved but vibrant (145, 152). It is animated even though the swirls no longer move because the swirls were caught mid-action. Nabokov cannot rewind time. He cannot play and repeat his life forever. Nor can Nabokov prevent physical death. What he can do, however, is not to “have not existed.” He can pause himself like the swirls in the marble. He defines his essence and gives it a name the same way he does Eupithecia nabokovi. He classifies himself, his life, by describing every memory and thought that he can, and calls it “that [which] the finder cannot unsee once it has been seen” (310).
Describing his life gives him a more fluid form than were he to list facts about himself. Both rubrics cube and the swirled marble hold colors and both are more than just a simple box or sphere. It is the marble only, which contains frozen movement. Nabokov describes his life using prose and nature. He could have written the entire book as he did Chapter Three, but that bland, impersonal writing style, the detached categorizing, would not be as appealing as his imagery from nature and his rich prose are.
“Now and then, shed by a blossoming tree, a petal would come own, down, down, and with the odd feeling of seeing something neither worshiper nor casual spectator ought to see, one would manage to glimpse its reflection which swiftly—more swiftly than the petal fell—rose to meet it; and, for the fraction of a second, one feared that the trick would not work, that the blessed oil would not catch fire, that the reflection might miss and the petal float away alone, but every time the delicate union did take place, with the magic precision of a poet’s word meeting halfway his, or a reader’s recollection” (271). Nabokov wants to make sure that his audience departs with what he is trying to convey—his ideas, himself. The petal is Nabokov, the “float down” is similar to death (the petals die after falling), the reflection is the water is the audience, and the reflection is the reflection of Nabokov’s essence. Nabokov wants the world, his audience, to catch him as he falls, to preserve him and reflect exactly what he sees himself as being. He worries that when he finishes falling, that the trick will not work. He is afraid that the petal will float away alone, the reflection lost somewhere in the stream. The “magic” connection is vital to Nabokov’s preservation. He wants to immortalize his memories, his thoughts, himself. To accomplish this, other people must remember him as he sees himself. He must be able to clearly convey what’s in his mind. The more people who remember him, understand him, and relate to him, the longer he will last. Writing about his life while using imagery from everyday life and nature is part of what Nabokov uses to ensure his preservation. The reason for this being that most people have seen some of nature and can imagine the feeling he is expressing through his imagery. Nabokov’s autobiography stays alive when it is preserved in nature because nature is living. The butterflies drifting amongst a sea of grass, the caterpillar stretching to see where its leaf went, all of these are in action (44). Writing about nature and life in prose serves to further add to this living feeling because prose is melodious and varies. So rather than kill his life by turning it into a list of facts and dates, Nabokov is able to seal it in a sort of biosphere, keeping everything inside his autobiography alive. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: great memory, bad book
Review: As a young child Vladimir Nabokov had an aptitude for mathematics. The Nabokov household had about fifty servants. As an emigre family Vladimir and his brother were in Cambridge and his parents and sisters and another brother were in Berlin. His mother by 1930 occupied an apartment in Prague and received a small pension from the Czech government. Nabokov's ancestors had numerous and diverse contacts with the world of letters. Nabokov says that his nostalgia is nostalgia for a lost childhood not lost banknotes. The kind of Russian family to which Nabokov belonged had a leaning toward English products, Pears soap, English toothpaste. Vladimir learned to read English before he learned to read Russian. One is always at home in one's past. Vladimir found his own French governess and his mother's governess living in retirement in Lausanne, Switzerland. The women spoke to one another then, although in the past when they were in the same house they ignored one another. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. The tutor started in 1906. When he was eleven his father decided that he should attend school. His father belonged to the great classless intelligentsia in Russia. In 1917-18 the family was put into a position of utter insecurity. His father became a minister of justice and the family was lodged near Yalta. In 1919 three Nabokov families fled Russia via the Crimea and Greece. From 1920 to 1940 Nabokov spent time preparing chess problems. The book has pictures and an index. The publishing history of the book's parts appears in the forward. The book has charm. The fascination of the study of butterflies is treated by the author. Another subject covered is an extensive catalogue of both near and distant ancestors of the Nabokovs.
Rating:
Summary: Nostalgia
Review: As a young child Vladimir Nabokov had an aptitude for mathematics. The Nabokov household had about fifty servants. As an emigre family Vladimir and his brother were in Cambridge and his parents and sisters and another brother were in Berlin. His mother by 1930 occupied an apartment in Prague and received a small pension from the Czech government. Nabokov's ancestors had numerous and diverse contacts with the world of letters. Nabokov says that his nostalgia is nostalgia for a lost childhood not lost banknotes. The kind of Russian family to which Nabokov belonged had a leaning toward English products, Pears soap, English toothpaste. Vladimir learned to read English before he learned to read Russian. One is always at home in one's past. Vladimir found his own French governess and his mother's governess living in retirement in Lausanne, Switzerland. The women spoke to one another then, although in the past when they were in the same house they ignored one another. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. The tutor started in 1906. When he was eleven his father decided that he should attend school. His father belonged to the great classless intelligentsia in Russia. In 1917-18 the family was put into a position of utter insecurity. His father became a minister of justice and the family was lodged near Yalta. In 1919 three Nabokov families fled Russia via the Crimea and Greece. From 1920 to 1940 Nabokov spent time preparing chess problems. The book has pictures and an index. The publishing history of the book's parts appears in the forward. The book has charm. The fascination of the study of butterflies is treated by the author. Another subject covered is an extensive catalogue of both near and distant ancestors of the Nabokovs.
Rating:
Summary: memory sings
Review: Even if you're not a fan of Nabokov's jewel-like, cryptic, and somewhat icy novels, you should read this beautiful and moving book. Like some medieval book of hours it is filled with vivid images of the vanished aristocratic life of pre-revolutionary Russia, recalled by the author in his lifelong loss. I have re-read it several times, always able to vividly see and experience the memories summoned. Don't miss out on this book just because you didn't enjoy the likes of KING, QUEEN, KNAVE; ADA, OR ARDOR, or LOLITA, or are tired of the less than literary memoirs that proliferate these days. It's a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful
Review: Even though the narrative spans almost 40 years and many seasons, it reads like a permanent summer. One seems to be following a sun-dappled path of Vyra park, with the author describing in great and florid detail each sunny spot. Seldom any connections are drawn among these illuminated patches of the past. Rather, each of them is made to pulsate to its own inimitable music. Sometimes the book feels like a family photo album, where the photographs, the facts, appear hopelessly black-and-white, while the writer's pencil gradually renders them dancing fountains of colors. Nabokov's pre-American years comprised two world wars, two Russian revolutions and fascism, but the book is not about historic events. His family and personal circle of friends included many remarkable people of the last century, and yet one does not feel a visitor in a portrait gallery either. The accounts of his supporting actors are sketchy, with the possible exception of his father, whose intellectual and physical presence in the book amounts to a fairly fleshy figure. The feeling of intensely personal recollections narrated over a cup of tea stays with the reader throughout the book. At the moment of writing, the times described are long gone, but the associated emotion is fresh. It ranges from the cool enumeration of relatives and dates, a cold dismissal of Stendahl, Balsac and Zola as "three detestable mediocrities", to movingly cherished details of his son's childhood. The enigma of Nabokov's phrasing, his subtle use of several languages and his erudition are as present as ever. And as ever they will reward the faithful with an exquisite linguistic journey.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: I had real trouble with the first 50 or so pages of 'Speak, Memory'. Contrary to what the official reviews say, I found that this book contained much recitation of dates, names, places etc, and then a whole heap of very boring passages about politics, history and butterflies to boot. Such passages pepper the book, but they are very easy to skip - and at the risk of seeming a philistine, I did indeed skip most of them, or at least only skim read them. However I skipped them to get to what lay waiting on the pages that followed: this book has in it the most breathtakingly beautiful and achingly perfect prose I've every read. Words that sweep over you and leave your heart beating a little faster. Descriptions so vivid you can feel, see, smell, hear them. Childhood episodes so familiar and so neatly presented that you'll be removed to your own childhood again, only to be brought back with a bump when the chapter ends. Although I found great expanses of the novel tedious, after reading each of those jewel-like passages of prose, I ached to read more Nabokov, an author I never thought I would read. "Speak, Memory" has left me amazed - I never knew that the English Language could be so moving, perfect and beautiful. I'm so very glad I persevered and read it to the end!
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