Nabokov is a painterly writer. In Speak, Memory, he writes in moments, snapshots, rather than linearly; time appears to be a rather abstract concept in his life story. Further, he has a love affair with color. Hardly a page goes by without him mentioning the visual palette, and sometimes he indulges us in a rainbow. The absence of time and abundance of color paint his story in astonishing, lovely pictures.
Life Without Time
Nabokov writes his life as a series of separate but overlapping, pictures, standing with butterflies in one scene, playing on the beach with Colette, writing Lolita. In each picture, time stops to catch a moment. In this particular passage, he explains how timelessness is a spiritual state. The ecstasy of the moment connects him to nature, to something greater, a state that eliminates time completely. This moment, like many other moments in the autobiography, becomes an artistic experience beyond this world.
Frozen Scenes
Sometimes, the scenes are explicitly frozen: ‘Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die’ (77). Generally, Nabokov simply shows us the details that make a picture, or series of pictures, poignant. He seems to open his past like a storybook: ‘A bewildering sequence of English nurses and governesses, some of them wringing their hands, others smiling at me enigmatically, come out to meet me as I re-enter my past’ (86). His snapshots of the caretakers who filled his life are amusing and artful; they flash onto the page like photos. In describing one of his tutors, who has a habit of standing on his head, Nabokov writes: ‘The next picture looks as if it had come onto the screen upside down' (156). He shows us his memories as he sees them, image after image.
A Poetic Picture Book
Speak, Memory resembles a picture book. Often, these pictures shine with vivid colors. For example, describing a tutor, he depicts a painting:
"I loved the nimble way he had of soaking his paintbrush in multiple color to the accompaniment of a rapid clatter produced by the enamel containers wherein the rich reds and yellows that the brush dimple were appetizingly cupped; and having thus collected its honey, it would cease to hover and poke, and by tow or three sweeps of its lush tip, would drench the ‘Vatmanski’ paper with an even spread of orange sky, across which, while that sky was still dampish, a long purple black cloud would be laid" (93).
The vivid description allows us to see the image ourselves. The red and yellow making an orange sky, deftly, beautifully. In this moment, as is often the case, we can also hear the picture, the clacking of the containers. The moment appears, in its spiritual perfection, quite clearly. Lastly, he lays this dark, purple cloud down. This cloud seems to show the contrast between Nabokov’s early life and later disappointment. The two experiences, rather than being separate, overlap in one poignant, metaphorical image.
Nabokov in Many Colors
Nabokov colors other memories with equal vividness: the garden through blue glasses (106), the box of colored pencils (101), Colette’s greenish eyes (149). He explains, regarding his visual memory: ‘The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with the utmost zest all my life’ (75). He does include sound, smell and other sensory impressions—but there’s an exquisite emphasis on color and visual expression. Further, he presents a case of ‘colored hearing,’ explaining how he sees each letter as a color, a trait that demonstrates his visual depth. By presenting his life as a lovely series of colorful patches, Nabokov shows how artistic representation defies time.
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory (Everyman's Library, 1999, 978-0375405532)
Clarissa Caldwell - Clarissa Caldwell lives, reads and writes in Walla Walla, Washington. She has a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of ...
