Colette to Véra--Influence of the Sea

As I reached the end of Speak, Memory, I noticed three major....motifs, or images that thread their way throughout the piece. These three were the image of the beach or seaside, of wheels or spirals, and of gardens or the forest. In the women he describes, and especially in particular details and events or places that he associates with them, we see these concepts. My next few blogs will focus on these women and how they are related to these recurring motifs.

Colette, his first childish love, is inextricably associated with the beach. This ocean (of emotion?) is evident in the lines, "I lay awake, listening to the recurrent thud of the ocean and planning our flight. The ocean seemed to rise and grope in the darkness and then heavily fall on its face" (151). The tragedy is in the failure of some great attempt to reach the as yet unattainable....something. Many times in the rhythm of a passage, there is the rhythm of the sea, tumbling with tension, crashing alive on some forgotten shore, then receding softly and slowly. Like the wings of a butterfly, the sea rises then falls away. Listen to the words in these next lines.....if only one could close ones eyes and hear them, then the image would be obvious, and in fact Nabokov makes this image clear with the phrase in parentheses. Still, the rhythm weaves the dream, this image:

"There our child kneeled motionless to be photographed in a quivering haze of sun against the scintillation of the sea, which is a milky blur in the snapshots we have preserved but was, in life, silvery blue, with great patches of purple-blue farther out, caused by warm currents in collaboration with and corroboration of (hear the pebbles rolled by the withdrawing wave?) eloquent old poets and their smiling similes" (308).

The alliteration of the "s" sound conjurs the hiss of rolling waves, waves that crash upon the shores of our minds eye with the alliteration of the crashing "p" sound. This is followed by the rolling of pebbles in words like "collaboration" or "corroboration". Once it is heard, it cannot be unheard. "The finder cannot unsee once it has been seen" (310).

Perhaps the sea represents love, emotion, or perhaps a type of rebirth. I would argue that it represents a sense of timelessness....of moments stretching on and on without end, the image of a single wave repeated over and over remains both singularly individual in its momentary existence yet timeless in its ongoing repetition.

After describing Louise and Tamara, Nabokov ends the work with Véra and his son, at the sea. At the very least, in the romantic interests he describes in detail, we come full circle, ending up, once again, at the seaside.