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.

Now it's Nabokovian...

Most of my childhood pictures not being digital, and as I am one of the primary photographers in my rather large family, there were not many photographs to choose from. This singular snapshot from the recent past currently resides on the memory card of my sister's newly acquired camera which can most likely be detected in the glare of both our glasses. Mine are prescription, hers purely decorative. She is pictured on the left, her right arm stretching out and almost obscuring my person in an attempt to capture us both in the frame. The gray seat cover in the upper left belongs to my little red car, a red similar to the red of my sister's tanktop. It was quite hot on this day as can be seen in the sun beating down on my sister and myself, seconds before we fled the car to enjoy the playful breezes. In the far distance, through the dust encrusted window behind us, one can see pine trees so indicative of the northwest. We are, at this point, in Idaho, after a lengthy drive on our way to the west coast. We have stopped momentarily to take in the ambiance of this campground adjacent rest stop. The red beads around my sister's neck are actually small beans, naturally red, and were a gift from our family in Portugal. I have an identical chain, though I am not wearing mine. The black feather earrings that are attempting to hide in the voluminous mass that is my recently straightened hair flutter in the slightest breeze like the movement of so many tiny sparrows, making me think of flight every time I wear them. These are perhaps most fitting for this occasion, as we fled the rampant restrictions of sedentary life in favor of discoveries yet unknown.

Endless Discoveries

I will be honest with the reader of this post and state frankly that I had a great deal of trouble engaging with Speak, Memory throughout much of the book. Beyond the first few brilliant words, that remain burned in my sight like the flare of a candle all too quickly put out, my eyes flitted about the page like the varied butterflies Nabokov spent his life chasing. I became lost in the myriad of details, and by allowing my fullest attention to encompass only the smallest details, I lost sight of greater themes. I failed to discover that "marvelously disguised insect or bird" in "a tangle of twigs and leaves" (298).

Something changed, however, when my eyes reached chapter nine or so. Somehow, a brilliant metamorphosis took place by which I was transformed into an avid believer in the greater meaning of each seemingly unimportant detail. Like tumblers in a lock, motifs followed one after another until the very last lines when the key was complete. Suddenly.....an !explosion! of knowledge, discovery, consciousness. The last page of my book is littered with hastily scrawled notes, as I strove to hold on to each of the many frenzied thoughts all vying for my immediate attention. I wanted to read the book again, this time with all the care of a scientist, in order to.....divine... how the trick was achieved.

There is so much to speak of that I hardly know where to begin as it all wants to flow tumbling out of me with no order, no limitations, only connections. I hope, in the next few blog entries to delve into each train of thought, though they fall one into the other without end....

One recurring theme or imagery that struck me from the beginning was evident in the opening lines of the work itself:

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (19).

From the very first line, Nabokov presents our lives as this vision of pure light suspended in impenetrable darkness. I was determined to track this light throughout every image, every snapshot in the album. Countless times, he describes a particular light striking an object, or a face, a tree.....a butterfly. This light then pervades every memory as some sort of divine thread connecting each piece of a fragmented whole. In his fascination with chess, again, there lies this eternal conflict between these two opposing forces of light and dark, white and black, life and death.

On Page 22, Nabokov speaks of his "birth of sentient life" in his first realization (or DISCOVERY) that he had a consciousness, an identity, independent from that of his parents. This realization gives him an intense form of joy similar to the solving of a puzzle, the winning of a chess game, the capture of an elusive species of butterfly. He speaks of childhood games and of the "fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel" into the light (23). This scene, this remembrance, seems wholly metaphorical and echoes, again, that feeling of rebirth, of waking consciousness, and of discovery. Nabokov wishes to retain this waking, knowledgable state at all times, lamenting in later chapters the need for sleep. He says, "the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me" (109). He regrets the inevitable joining of oneself with the darkness. Every discovery along the way becomes a repetition of the act of awakening. And so we climb, ever higher, gaining increasing insight with every revelation.

So, the butterflies, those beings of riotous color and limited time become symbols of this act, and perhaps, of ourselves. We undergo immense metamorphoses throughout the course of our lives. These lives are limited by the boundaries of time, by those two great abysses that lie on either side of this existence, as Nabokov describes. We can only hope to live that brief life in glorious color. Perhaps the endless quest to capture these butterflies is but a quest to capture self, a quest to capture the sublime in every moment. So, like the intrepid butterfly hunter Nabokov himself represents, we set off, net in hand in search of "the blissful shock, the enchantment and glee" that can only be found in such discovery.