Speak, Memory
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| Speak, Memory | |
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| Name | Speak, Memory |
| Caption | First edition cover |
| Author | Vladimir Nabokov |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Autobiography, Memoir |
| Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
| Pub date | 1951 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 244 |
Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by Vladimir Nabokov describing his aristocratic childhood in pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg and his exile across Berlin, Prague, and Paris before emigrating to the United States. The work interweaves recollection with literary reflection, moving through personal anecdotes, familial portraits, and meditations on art and language. Nabokov's narrative links to broader currents in twentieth-century literature through references to notable figures, movements, and cultural institutions.
Background and Composition
Nabokov began composing the memoir in Paris during the 1920s and continued revisions in Berlin and later in Montreux and New York City, often recalling scenes tied to Tsar Nicholas II, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, Alexander Pushkin, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Drafts circulated among contemporaries including members of his family and friends such as Vera Nabokov and literary figures in salons frequented by émigré communities that included individuals connected to Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Scriabin. The composition reflects influences from earlier autobiographical exemplars like Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Henry James, and Thomas Mann, and responds to events such as the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the interwar migrations through Weimar Republic cities.
Publication History
Initial installments appeared in Russian-language émigré periodicals in Prague, Berlin, and Paris, later revised into English editions published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in the United States and John Murray in the United Kingdom. The 1951 edition followed earlier Russian versions from the 1930s and an expanded English edition in 1966. Publishers, critics, and fellow writers from circles that included T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Harold Bloom, and editors at The New Yorker played roles in shaping its reception and subsequent printings. Special illustrated editions involved collaborations with artists associated with Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and printers from Oxford University Press and Harvard University Press for scholarly reprints.
Structure and Contents
The memoir is organized into discrete chapters and vignettes, presenting portraits of family members such as Nabokov's father, Vladimir D. Nabokov, and relatives connected to Saint Petersburg high society, salons frequented by people linked to Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, and educational experiences tied to institutions resembling Trinity College, Cambridge and schools with affinities to Eton College traditions. Episodes range from detailed childhood recollections about collections (butterflies and entomology tied to naturalists like Carl Linnaeus and collectors influenced by Alfred Russel Wallace) to reflections on exile in European cities such as Berlin, Prague, Geneva, and London. Interlaced are literary reminiscences invoking Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and scenes set against cultural touchstones including Hermitage Museum, Mariinsky Theatre, Bolshoi Theatre, and the intellectual milieus of Harvard University, Columbia University, and Princeton University where Nabokov lectured.
Themes and Style
Major themes include memory, identity, displacement, and artistry, examined through references to literary and cultural figures like Proust, Joyce, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Immanuel Kant. Nabokov's style blends lyrical description, precise entomological detail, and metafictional commentary reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. The narrative aesthetic resonates with techniques found in works by Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Andrei Bely, while engaging with visual arts via nods to Rembrandt, Goya, Claude Monet, and Édouard Manet. The prose exhibits multilingual play involving French, Russian, German, and English idioms, reflecting connections to émigré networks that included figures such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Diaghilev, and Maxim Gorky.
Critical Reception and Influence
Critics and scholars—from contemporaries like Edmund Wilson, John Updike, V. S. Pritchett, and Isaac Babel to later commentators including Mikhail Bakhtin, Susan Sontag, Frank Kermode, and Harold Bloom—have debated the memoir's veracity, artistry, and place in the canon. The book influenced novelists and critics across languages, shaping approaches by writers such as Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Munro, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Academic studies emerged from departments at Yale University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Columbia University, intersecting with scholarship on modernism, narratology, and memory studies influenced by theorists like Pierre Nora and Paul Ricoeur.
Adaptations and Cultural Legacy
Elements of the memoir informed stage and radio adaptations involving producers and directors associated with BBC Radio, NPR, and theatre companies connected to Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre, as well as cinematic references in films by auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Ingmar Bergman who explored memory and exile. The book's entomological details prompted collaborations with museums like the American Museum of Natural History and curators linked to Smithsonian Institution exhibitions. Collections of Nabokov papers reside in archives at Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Bodleian Library, and Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, ensuring ongoing scholarly engagement. The memoir remains a touchstone for discussions in literary festivals featuring contributors from The Paris Review, Granta, The New Yorker, and academic conferences at institutions such as Columbia University and Harvard University.
Category:Books about memory Category:Autobiographies