How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
But even so, the individual mystery remains to tantalize the memoirist. Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap. (1.2.3)
Here Nabokov seems to be saying that the point of writing a memoir is to figure out "the individual mystery." But it seems to us that this might be a bit of a red herring, and mighty subjective to boot. Each one of us "contains multitudes" (shout out to Mister Walt Whitman), and Nabokov knows this. So why try to solve the mystery when you know there won't ever be just one answer?
Quote #2
The following of such thematic designs through one's life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography. (1.3.3)
Stories (fiction or non-) are all about patterns and rhythms, so it's no surprise that Nabokov thinks of his own life this way.
Quote #3
...those large, gloomy, eminently bourgeois apartments that I have let to so many émigré families in my novels and short stories. (2.4.5)
In this moment, Nabokov makes himself a landlord, renting out his own family's post-exile Berlin apartments to his fictional characters, as if fictional characters share a similar fate to that of gone loved ones, living in the memories of the writer.
Quote #4
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist. (5.1.1)
Many writers get their inspiration from events that happen in their own lives. Here, Nabokov is describing the dislocation that happens when doing so. We wonder, does it make the job harder for a novelist-turned-autobiographer, trying to take back all of those memories he gave to fictional characters?
Quote #5
Few things are left, many have been squandered. Have I given away Box I (son and husband of Loulou, the housekeeper's pet), that old brown dachshund fast asleep on the sofa? No, I think he is still mine. [...] He is so old and his sleep is so thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside. Then a pneumatic door heaves and clangs in the vestibule. She has come after all; I had so hoped she would not. (5.2.3)
In writing fiction, Nabokov worries he has given away too much. Who is "she" in this passage? Who is coming to take away poor old Box the pup?
Quote #6
What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity. Have I really salvaged her from fiction? (5.7.4)
Nabokov seems to have particular guilt around Mademoiselle when it comes to using her in fiction, and also the way her life turned out. But she doesn't seem much different than other people in his life, so why her?
Quote #7
Their solicitude for the "average collector who should not be made to dissect" is comparable to the way nervous publishers of popular novels pamper the "average reader"—who should not be made to think. (6.2.5)
There is a clear similarity between the way Nabokov talks about Lepidoptera and the way he talks about reading. Very, very interesting...
Quote #8
[My father] used to confess that the creation of a story or poem, any story or poem, was to him as incomprehensible a miracle as the construction of an electric machine. (9.1.5)
Reading "Speak, Memory," we sometimes get the sense that we're watching Nabokov compose his autobiography. Of course, we're not. This is a composed, carefully constructed book. Even if we think its creation seems altogether "comprehensible," chances are it's a lot more complicated than it seems on first read. (But we knew that already, right?)
Quote #9
Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could pick out brightly stained structural details of celestial organisms, or glowing slits in dark banks, or flat, ethereal beaches that looked like mirages of desert islands. I did not know then (as I know perfectly well now) what to do with such things—how to get rid of them, how to transform them into something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver—and this inability enhanced my oppression. (10.6.1)
Nabokov seems to find writing therapeutic. In telling a story, and including stray memories, thoughts and feelings become more organized, and manageable. We guess we get this, but a nice massage or some vegging out doesn't hurt either.
Quote #10
...she passed me a hand mirror so that I might see the smear of blood on my cheekbone where at some indeterminable time I had crushed a gorged mosquito by the unconscious act of propping my cheek on my fist. But I saw more than that. Looking into my own eyes, I had the shocking sensation of finding the mere dregs of my usual self, odds and ends of an evaporated identity which it took my reason quite an effort to gather again in the glass. (11.5.5)
After writing his first poem, Nabokov looks in the mirror and finds himself lessened: writing, he learns, takes a lot of energy. It requires that you give something of yourself, and you never know what you'll be left with after you're done.