Some thoughts about Speak, Memory...

- The seminal event in Nabokov's adult life was the Russian Revolution. How would you describe the role of the Revolution in his life, and the structure of Speak, Memory?

- In chapter six (pg. 94-95 of the Everyman edition), he draws a parallel between nature and art:

When a butterfly has to look like a leaf, not only are all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but markings mimicking grub-bored holes are generously thrown in. ‘Natural selection’ in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of ‘the struggle of life’ when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic sublety, exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator’s power of appreciation. I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.

Do you agree that art a game of enchantment and deception? What about nature?

- Though dedicated to his wife Vera, Speak, Memory seems to an appreciation and exoneration of his father Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov. How does he represent his father? What about his mother and his brother Sergey?

- In Chapter 13 (pg. 205 in Everyman edition) , Nabokov sees an indirectly proportional relationship between someone's politics and their aesthetic taste:

All cultured and discriminating Russians knew that this astute politician had about as much taste and interest in aesthetic matters as an ordinary Russian bourgeois of the Flaubertian épicier sort,… but Nesbit and his highbrow friends saw in him a kind of sensitive, poetic-minded patron and promoter of the newest trends in art and would smile a superior smile when I tried to explain that the connexion between advance politics and advanced art was purely a verbal one (gleefully exploited by Soviet propaganda), and that the more radical a Russian was in politics, the more conservative he was on the artistic side.

Is this true or not true? The more radical someone's politics the more conservative their taste in art?

- What does anyone know about the writer Sirin which Nabokov notes as one of his favorite Russian émigré authors.

I found this old footage of Nabokov and Lionel Trilling on a 1950s TV show. Of course, they are discussing Lolita, but Nabokov's vicious wit is on display. Can you imagine this being on television today:



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We'll be meeting to discuss this book on March 11th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.