December 2008: Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory

Discussions start December 1st, 2008.

I will start by saying that Nabokov talking about the detail of the tunnels he used to make by the divan brought back memories of my childhood where we used to do that on the balcony.Fun memories.

I am only about 50 pages in and I have to say the details are amazing but I had a hard time understanding about the letters and the colors part,so anyone that wants to explain go right ahead.

Libra said:

I will start by saying that Nabokov talking about the detail of the tunnels he used to make by the divan brought back memories of my childhood where we used to do that on the balcony.Fun memories.

I am only about 50 pages in and I have to say the details are amazing but I had a hard time understanding about the letters and the colors part,so anyone that wants to explain go right ahead.

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It sounds like Synesthesia, Libra.

I looked up the word in Wiki,wow.

I was struck by Nabokov's comment on the second page that time is a prison. I'm not sure I agree. Although one cannot escape time; time moves on. In a way, time may be more like a journey on open road without any ability to turn back or turn to the side. While we cannot remove ourselves from time, we have been given the ability to explore the time we are in. There is little to explore in a prison - but there is a world to explore in time.

It has been said that time cannot be purchased, marked or saved. It can only be spent. Spend it wisely!

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said "Be careful then how you walk ... making the best use of the time, because the days are evil."

I am reminded of the question "Why did God invent time?" The answer: "So that everything doesn't happen at once." A corollary question is "Why did God invent space?" The answer: "So that everything doesn't happen to me."

Libra said:

I am only about 50 pages in and I have to say the details are amazing but I had a hard time understanding about the letters and the colors part,so anyone that wants to explain go right ahead.

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It's a recognized phenomenon and not easily explainable. Nabokov made it seem real to me, with his details about the different colors. One letter was a different shade of green from another.

What struck me about that passage was how he used his experience to show his bond with his mother. She was calm about it. Yes, letters had colors for her also. Then he builds on this with other warm memories of his mother, quite detailed. In the background, with occasional glancing references, is the sense of loss. They lost their life in Russia just as he now fears losing these memories of his parents and his childhood.

I have only finished the first two chapters, so I want to see how he develops this.

There are photos of Vyra and Rozhdestveno at Vyra / Nabokov Museum Official Site. Click on "Visit the Gallery".

oskylad said:

I was struck by Nabokov's comment on the second page that time is a prison. I'm not sure I agree. Although one cannot escape time; time moves on. In a way, time may be more like a journey on open road without any ability to turn back or turn to the side. While we cannot remove ourselves from time, we have been given the ability to explore the time we are in. There is little to explore in a prison - but there is a world to explore in time.

It has been said that time cannot be purchased, marked or saved. It can only be spent. Spend it wisely!

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said "Be careful then how you walk ... making the best use of the time, because the days are evil."

I am reminded of the question "Why did God invent time?" The answer: "So that everything doesn't happen at once." A corollary question is "Why did God invent space?" The answer: "So that everything doesn't happen to me."

Click to expand...

I think the time as a prison fits the point that he's trying to make, and that is of course that there is no way for him to go back and explore the pre Vladimir Nabokov darkness.

silverseason said:

It's a recognized phenomenon and not easily explainable. Nabokov made it seem real to me, with his details about the different colors. One letter was a different shade of green from another.

What struck me about that passage was how he used his experience to show his bond with his mother. She was calm about it. Yes, letters had colors for her also. Then he builds on this with other warm memories of his mother, quite detailed. In the background, with occasional glancing references, is the sense of loss. They lost their life in Russia just as he now fears losing these memories of his parents and his childhood.

I have only finished the first two chapters, so I want to see how he develops this.

Click to expand...

He seems to be talking about the bond with his mother more than anything,maybe because she understood him since she was the same way.

oskylad said:

There are photos of Vyra and Rozhdestveno at Vyra / Nabokov Museum Official Site. Click on "Visit the Gallery".

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The book I have has pictures inside of the family and it is nice to put names and faces together.

Robert said:

I think the time as a prison fits the point that he's trying to make, and that is of course that there is no way for him to go back and explore the pre Vladimir Nabokov darkness.

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It may have elements of that, but I think he intends something deeper. He is taking about his first realizing the sense of time as a child.

I commented in my earlier post that time may be like a journey on open road without any ability to turn back or turn to the side. I realize on re-reading that Nabokov's analogy is more like a river than a road. This comes out when he "felt [him]self plunged abruptly into a radiant and mobile medium that was none other than the pure element of time. One shared it--just as excited bathers share shining seawater--with creatures that were not oneself but that were joined to one by time's common flow."

Nabokov comes back to these ideas in Chapter 3, Part 4, when he is talking about the "fair Oredezh" where, downstream from Vyra, "the endless tumultuous flow of a water mill gave the spectator (his elbows on the handrail) the sensation of receding endlessly, as if this were the stern of time itself."

A somewhat similar idea is expressed by Lin Yutang, who said "Life ... is really a dream, and we human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of life, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard."

oskylad said:

A somewhat similar idea is expressed by Lin Yutang, who said "Life ... is really a dream, and we human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of life, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard."

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A very nice image. Thanks for sharing!

oskylad said:

It may have elements of that, but I think he intends something deeper. He is taking about his first realizing the sense of time as a child.

I commented in my earlier post that time may be like a journey on open road without any ability to turn back or turn to the side. I realize on re-reading that Nabokov's analogy is more like a river than a road. This comes out when he "felt [him]self plunged abruptly into a radiant and mobile medium that was none other than the pure element of time. One shared it--just as excited bathers share shining seawater--with creatures that were not oneself but that were joined to one by time's common flow."

Nabokov comes back to these ideas in Chapter 3, Part 4, when he is talking about the "fair Oredezh" where, downstream from Vyra, "the endless tumultuous flow of a water mill gave the spectator (his elbows on the handrail) the sensation of receding endlessly, as if this were the stern of time itself."

A somewhat similar idea is expressed by Lin Yutang, who said "Life ... is really a dream, and we human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of life, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard."

Click to expand...

oskylad,you make me read more thorough as to not miss anything.

I am not rushing through this book. I read it years ago, mostly for the story of Nabokov's life. Now, with help from these comments, I'm finding much more.

My edition of the book (Quality Paperback Book Club) has a map of the country estate and family photographs. In the Foreword, Nabokov gives titles to the chapters, although these titles do not appear in the text itself. Chapter 3 he refers to as "Portrait of My Uncle." As I was reading through it, I kept looking for the uncle. All the other members of the extended family and ancestry appear first, too numerous to remember.

Then the uncle. His mother's only brother to survive into adulthood, even so he died young at 45. When Nabokov was a boy his uncle announced to him that he was his heir, but then (in French): I have nothing more to say to you. So, as a teenager, Nabokov inherited the uncle's estate and the equivalent of a couple of million dollars. This wealth vaporized a year later in the Russian revolution.

It is striking that Nabokov makes a great point that his loss is not the money, but his childhood. Only when we are children can we believe that the present will endure forever. In his childhood, his uncle lives, everyone is serene:

"The mirror brims with brightness; the bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die."

This was my first Nabokov. I read it about 2-3 years ago. I found it to be such an amazing book. When it was recommended to me I thought, "Why would I want to read an autobiography of an author I know nothing about?" But, as I've seen confirmed in this thread, the writing is so equisite you soon forget that this is an autobiography and begin reading it purely as a piece of literature.

My favorite scene is the description of Nabokov's father frozen at the top of the arc when the peasants are tossing him on the blanket. It's a gorgeous crystalized snapshot of his father. Beautiful.

I'm finding it a bit dry at times. He lived in such an interesting era, but what I'm currently reading about are Nabokov's adventures in butterfly collecting.

I like the way he describes in detail certain thing like the colored pencils.

"Now the colored pencils in action.atahe green one,by a smere whirl of the wrist,could be made to produce a ruffled tree,or the eddy left by a submerged crocodile.The blue one drew a simple line across the page-and the horizon of all seas was there.A nondescript blunt one kept getting into one's way....."
and when he gets to the white one...

"I discovered that,far from being a fraud leaving no mark on the page,it was the ideal implement since I could imagine whatever I wished while I scrawled."

This part of the story where he talks about Mademoiselle,I found very facetious:

"The subsequent claims she put forward were quite different."Ah", she sighed, "comme on s'aimait-didn't we love each other! Those good old days in the château! The dead wax doll was once buried under the oak![No-a wool stuffed Golliwogg.]And that time you and Serge ran away and left me stumbling and howling in the depths of the forest![Exaggerated.]Ah,la fessée que je vous ai flanquée-My ,what a spanking I gave you![She did try to slap me once but the attempt was never repeated.]Votre tante,la Princesse, Whom you struck with your little fist because she had been rude to me![Do not remember.]And the way you whispered to me your childish troubles![Never.]....

I cannot begin to understand how color played such a great role in Nabokov's childhood. He talks about "colored hearing" in Chapter 2/1, where "color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline." He expands upon this in Chapter 2/1 to tell of his mother showing him the lilac tree "that grows out of mixed blue and red" and her jewelry which incuded "flashing tiaras, chokers and rings" which reminded him of the "colored electric bulbs - sapphire, emerald, ruby" that festooned the street during imperial fêtes. In Chapter 4/5, he remembers these as the "color treats given me by my mother".

When he remembers his Uncle Ruka in Chapter 3/3, he remembers his "grey-green eyes flecked with rust", his opal and gold snake ring, the opals on his fingers and cuff links, the gold chainlet on his wrist, and the "carnation in the buttonhole of his dove-gray, mouse-gray, or silver-gray summer suit".

In Chapter 5/1, he recalls the maple leaves being formed into "an almost complete spectrum (minus the blue - a big disappointment!), green shading into lemon, lemon into orange and so on through to the reds to purples, purplish browns, reddish again and back through the lemon to green".

In Chapter 5/2, we have the colored pencils that Libra talks aout in her earlier post.

In Chapter 5/5, he remembers the sun breaking into "geometrical gems after passing through rhomboids and squares of stained glass" and later "the harlequin pattern of colored panes", the "magic glasses" where "f one looked through blue glass, the sand turned to cinders while inky trees swam in a tropical sky. The yellow created an amber world infused with an extra strong brew of sunshine. The red made the foliage drip ruby dark upon a pink footpath. The green soaked greenery in a greener green [love the alliteration]."

I find it telling however that, as Nabokov reflects on his childhood, it is not the "magic glasses" through which his "parched nostalgia longed to peer", but rather the "small square of normal, savorless glass" where "one saw a matter-of-fact white bench under familiar trees".

Though the book is about his life and I am not a big fan on non-fiction,I realy like this book,his imagination,he sees things through a childs eye,he doesn't miss one tiny detail.It's amazing,brings to mind the comment "stop and smell the roses".

It also makes me want to get his other work and give them a try.