Nabokov is a weirdo. His best characters are also oddballs: Humbert Humbert, the delusional pedophile, or Charles Kinbote the insane romantic. His novels demonstrate the immorality of living in a fictional, constructed reality. Humbert believes that he lives in a world where a relationship with a young girl is viable and ideal. Kinbote's parasitic relationship with his neighbor John Shade is based on his (imagined) kingship of an obscure European country. This personal history demonstrates the way people construct a world from their memories that may or may not bear any resemblance to reality.

Despite the fact that he lived through some of the most tumultuous events in human history, Nabokov does not react with the fervor that one would expect. Like a good novelist, he is more concerned with the minute details that percolate from his speaking memory: the seasonal changes of flora and fauna on his family estate, the peccadilloes of his nannies and tutors, his hobbies (butterflies and chess problems). His mother and father are described somewhat, but Nabokov does not seem to really be close to them - his family relations are confined to rigid, Victorian formality. He writes that his brother Sergey is "a mere shadow in the background of my richest and most detailed recollections." The tutors who somewhat incompetently guided his intellectual development are more fully fleshed out.

What makes Nabokov so brilliant is his unexpected, eccentric view of the world and how he delights in presenting this view through the playground of language. A lot of Speak, Memory is overwritten, in the sense that he often goes down the rabbit hole of description and dares his reader to come up for air. The details are precise and patchwork: following the thread of his memories presents a major challenge for the casual reader. ( )

Nabokov rememora aquí sus meditaciones infantiles en el retrete, sus vacaciones en la finca campestre de la familia, sus amoríos adolescentes con Tamara en los museos de San Petersburgo; narra las peripecias de su huida de las huestes de Lenin y de su exilio europeo; escribe un homenaje a la honestidad política de su padre y a la belleza y ternura de su madre; pero lo que menos importa son los temas, porque de lo que se trata al fin y al cabo es de celebrar un festín de ingenio e inteligencia, de mordacidad despiadada y de nostalgia desgarradora, y en el que Nabokov es fiel a los consejos que daba a sus estudiantes de literatura: «¡Acariciad los detalles! ¡Los divinos detalles!»

Nabokov talán legjellegzetesebb írói tulajdonsága az a tündéri nagyképűség, amivel nekiül a könyveinek. A Szólj, emlékezet! elméletileg például önéletrajz, de aki a hagyományos önéletrajzok szerelmese, attól még simán gyűlölheti. Nabokov tulajdonképpen nem mesél semmit magáról, egyszerűen megfogja az emlékezet nevű (már elnézést) tehéntőgyszerű képződményt, és kifacsar belőle mindent, amit csak lehet. Az eredmény egy érzésekből, képekből, villanásokból álló lírai kollázs, helyenként tömény, mint a málnaszörp, de Vladimir úgy van vele, hogy majd az olvasó felhígítja magának, ha úgy akarja. A Szólj, emlékezet!-tel nem fognak megbarátkozni, akik szerint az irodalom 1.) könnyed ebéd utáni séta egy hűvös allén, gesztenyefák alatt, belátható távolságban kávézóterasz, hűsítő itallal 2.) sziklás, puszta, csupasz és kövecses táj, amin az ember átvánszorog, miközben rettentő dolgok nyitjára lel. Nabokov könyvei inkább ravasz, talán értelmetlen sakkfeladványok, villanásnyi időre megpillantott, aztán továbblibbenő színes pillangók, céltalan, de káprázatos vetődések egy kapustól, miközben a közönség gólt kiált. Szépek, na. ( )

how hard it is to mine the actual past, instead of the invented past. I don't fully believe the man, but I believe his love for his own childhood which has led him to create a wonderfully complete terrain . . . even though some of it is doubtless spun out of the rags of memory, it's spun with such desire, you forgive it, and even more, you permit yourself to believe it. ( )

38. Speak, Memory : An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov
published: 1966
format: 302-page paperback
acquired: August 2020, from a Goodwill
read: Jul 24 – Aug 2
time reading: 13:15, 2.6 mpp
rating: 4
locations:
about the author: 1899 – 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922. Lived in Berlin (1922-1937), Paris, the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).

This one I was happy to finish. Because it was difficult and slow to work through, and really evasive, although rewarding in its own odd way.

I saw reviewers comment on how self-indulgent this is, and also how evocative it is. It was mainly, for me, impenetrable. I learned a lot about the natural magic of well-maintained wealthy Russia summer estates, of hunting butterflies, of the awkwardness of English and French governesses and the eccentric personal tutors of various backgrounds. Nabokov's family was crazy wealthy, even as his father was politically liberal (and influential). But this left him prominently caught between or outside the Russian red and white forces in the Revolution, and forced the family to flee into a ruined exile. His father was later assassinated, or actually shot while shielding a colleague from an assassin (an assassin who apparently did well later in Nazi Germany). Vladimir Nabokov was left a permanent exile, and caught into a life of before and after. This is mainly about that lost Russian childhood, and his lost summers in the family's country estate.

Nabokov tells us he doesn't regret the loss of that fanciful life and, as he tells us so little about how he feels, I'm tempted to believe him. This is a very frustrated book for anyone looking to learn about the formation of this author. I was looking for that, and found my desperately looking to pin down anything solid. I was grasping at fog. Within this curious atmospheric construction, he reveals nothing.

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7570843 ( )