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1987 Autobiographic Rapture and Fictive Irony in Speak, Memory and "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" David Shields

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Recommended Citation Shields, David. "Autobiographic Rapture and Fictive Irony in Speak, Memory and "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight"." The Iowa Review 17.1 (1987): 44-54. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.3460

This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Autobiographic Rapture and Fictive Irony in Speak, Memory and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight David Shields

An Initial Titular Antithesis

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE TITLE of Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography and the title of his first English novel suggests a An distinction between autobiography and fiction. Speak, Memory: is an self-conscious and self-directed Autobiography Revisited excruciatingly a is a mock-classical address appellation for book, for "^peak, Memory" from the author to his own memory, as if his recollections had unto not "An themselves only personality but also language; Autobiography Revisited" is Nabokov's extremely arch way of saying that the present as text is the revised edition of Conclusive Evidence. But the comedy, always a with Nabokov, cuts considerably deeper. If autobiography is physical to one can if has words to place which return, and memory with which communicate, then consciousness is tangible and the imagination is real. one Into titular phrase Nabokov has compressed the central motif of his is an "loaded" for memoir. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight equally title, or "real life" implies that lived life, rather than remembered imagined life, is real: that here?the naive novel-reader thinks?we're going to get the on a as an artist were to be found goods writer's "real life," if the life of In a "Sebastian" anywhere except in his work. book about half-brothers, as a to in must be taken reference Viola's twin brother Twelfth Night, and a on "chess and "dubbed "Knight" is triple pun "night," knight," we but the novel-title knight." Note the differences: interpret both titles, makes references to the world as well as to literature, whereas the the novel-title autobiography-title is militantly hermetic. Furthermore, assumes a an an sophistication beyond the reader and hence implicit tagonism toward us, for certainly the reader is deceived who approaches the that we're to The Real Life of Sebastian Knight with expectation going on the "get" the "real life" of Sebastian Knight. The autobiography-title, ensu other hand, takes the reader into its confidence; explains the entire, and via its ing book in its five-words-and-a-colon; acknowledges reveals,

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University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org use own terror of the imperative, the yearning of its voice, the and ecstasy own of its creation, the rapid heart ("some forty-five hundred heartbeats an creator. hour," p. 19) of its

The Dichotomy of Introduction

The critical introduction to The Real Life of SebastianKnight is so inferior can a that the reader only hope it's forgery, that "Conrad Brenner" is an a Nabokov's impersonation of idiot. It's doubtful such saving delight is case. sentence the Virtually any will succeed in condemning Mr. Brenner, none so as but perhaps would be quite completely effective the following:

not a The maelstrom-descenders of his books reflect freely meta phoric condition, but Nabokov's dialogue of convoluted mistrust, the diabolic conscience in a death-lock with romance monocracy, (p. xii)

as a This is best received parody of critical jargon; unfortunately, it isn't. in to in When, however, the Foreword Speak, Memory, Nabokov engages at self-important pedantry, he is least partially kidding. He writes:

By theOld Style Iwas born on April 10, at daybreak, in the last year of the last century, and thatwas (if I could have been whisked across at the border once) April 22 in, say, Germany; but since all my birthdays were celebrated, with diminishing pomp, in the twentieth century, everybody, including myself, upon being shifted by revolu to tion and expatriation from the Julian calendar the Gregorian, used to add thirteen, instead of twelve, days to the 10th of April. The error is serious. What is to be done? (p. 13)

sentence to The extremely long, intentionally tedious, first is there only set sentences up the two, short, pseudo-solemn that follow it. The effect, unlike that of Brenner's is comic. introductions, purposefully Furthermore, in meant to Nabokov's scholarly language the above paragraph is jar with the truly poetic language present elsewhere in the Foreword?e.g., "That at cornerstone order had been established in 1936, the placing of the which a already held in its hidden hollow various maps, timetables, collection of

45 even ?as matchboxes, and I now realize ?the view from my balcony of at tea Geneva lake, of its ripples and glades of light, black-dotted today, coots Brenner's time, with and tufted ducks" (pp. 10-11)?while absurd to it grandiloquence has nothing bounce off except itself, and there does. we encounter In front of fiction turgid interpretation, whereas before we own autobiography read the autobiographer's self-conscious explana at to create tion, his last attempt apologia. The fictionist seeks enough mys tery that he needs to be studied; the memoirist attempts an act of self so at study profound that the puzzle of his life is least partially solved.

First Lines

an common sense us our ex "The cradle rocks above abyss, and tells that a istence is but brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" sentence of is (p. 19). The opening Speak, Memory communal ("us," "our"), contemplative, serious, indulgently alliterative. The identification a between the author and all of humanity, and the attempt to arrive at are comprehensive understanding of one's life, signatures of autobiog tone to raphy. The essentially serious and the unblushing surrender florid contrast language with the comedy and controlled language of The Real Life of SebastianKnight; it is as if only when finally writing about himself as so subject that Nabokov could make completely manifest what obviously informs, a level or six below the surface, his fiction: his love of sheer verbal sound and his tragic perceptions. The first line of The Real Life of Sebastian a or Knight is probably parody of the novelistic biographic entrance; was on "Sebastian Knight born the thirty-first of December, 1899, in the to former capital of my country" (p. 5). In direct contrast the sentence autobiographic beginning, this is linguistically unremarkable, and concerned with the names, dates, and places of the world, rather than movements of the human After we have read in the mind. Speak, Memory own of Nabokov's nearly obsessive identification of his age with the age of we the twentieth century, read Sebastian Knight's birthdate, "the thirty first of December, 1899," with a bemused smile. So, too, when we know that Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg and how bitterly he views his see expatriation, do we the particular poignance of the phrase, "the former capital of my country," for the former capital is Nabokov's former capital and the lost country is Nabokov's lost country. This is the way the

46 fabulator tends to work: satirizing in fiction what he swoons over in fact, onto own displacing other people the details of his identity.

Photographs of a Gentleman

one It is only appropriate that of the very few Nabokovian novels referred to in Speak,Memory is The Real Life of SebastianKnight:

reasons to For various I find it inordinately hard speak about my other brother. That twisted quest for SebastianKnight (1940), with com its gloriettes and self-mate combinations, is really nothing in parison to the task I balked in the first version of this memoir and am facedwith now. (p. 257)

to One of the principal strategies of autobiography is insist upon its more supremacy because it is visceral, cutting closer to the human heart, so we most here have Nabokov?the radical defender of the inviolability of the imagination ?stating that writing about his brother in fact ismuch more difficult thanwriting about a half-brother in fiction. Nabokov balks as the task in this version well. He writes two uninspired, painful pages on to more about Sergey, then surrenders in despair, moving the pleasant own at to topic of his education Cambridge. Without imagination blur seems the distance between himself and his subject, Nabokov unable to reconcile himself to the isolation which existed between himself and his on brother. Sebastian Knight, the other hand, places the following adver tisement in the newspaper:

Author writing fictitious biography requires photos of gentleman, efficient appearance, plain, steady, teetotaller, bachelors preferred. to Will pay for photos childhood, youth, manhood appear in said work. (p. 40)

an is not Sebastian does write Lost Property, autobiography which in its to Lost is an im dissimilar rapturousness Speak, Memory, but Property not same aginary work?it is listed in the card catalogue?in the way that Sebastian's advertised biography is fictitious: it is a forged document to asserts pretending be real. Thus, in Nabokov's autobiography he the

47 primacy of autobiography, and in his first English-language novel he asserts the primacy of fiction. This is how it should be: each genre ruling out other In fiction ismade to seem every genre. Speak, Memory less than life, whereas in The Real Life of SebastianKnight non-fiction ismade to seem sans limited any mediating and disruptive imagination.

Parallel Lines Cannot Intersect

In announces: "Toilers of Speak, Memory Nabokov the world, disband! are was on a Old books wrong. The world made Sunday," (p. 298) where as same not when essentially the sentiment ?"No, Leslie, I'm dead. I have finished building aworld, and this ismy Sabbath rest" (p. 90)?appears in The Real Life of SebastianKnight, it is spoken not by the narrator but by a context. Sebastian, and it is spoken in dramatic rather than static We to we thrill to both statements, but the former simply assent, revelling in we its rhythms and its affirmation of art, while read 'through' the latter as a utterance, interpreting it, treating it revelation of personality. Simi larly,Nabokov defines his first love affair in the alliterative terms of High Pastoral?"comely country," "secret spots in the woods," "mythological manifestation," "sylvan security" (pp. 229-234) ?whereas when Sebas tian's half-brother describes Sebastian's first romance, extreme self

consciousness intrudes, the mock-pastoral predominates, and love lapses to farce: Sebastian says, "You're a very poor cox," as his love rows down in to art at the river (p. 138). Thus, his novel Nabokov attempts push least a little toward life in order to make the art convincing, i.e., life-like. The art on is a to push toward the autobiographer's part rage order, toward the some a discovery of semblance of meaningful pattern; the push toward life on an to a the novelist's part is symptomatic of effort render world beyond can come the typewriter. Fiction off'crueler' than autobiography, since its are to to more subjects subject critical analysis. Autobiography appears be tolerant of sheer rapture.

Lives of the Saints

comes to What is so surprising to the reader who from Nabokov's novels in a his autobiography is the quality and quantity of love the latter. As fictionist, Nabokov is at times compassionate, but basically he is witty,

48 on droll, clever, exceedingly intelligent, icily cool. Speak, Memory, the other is suffused with for the human hand, pity whole perplexity. Speak, Memory is populated by seraphicalfigures, while The Real Life of Sebastian a moments Knight is collection of clowns. Nabokov says that, in of "in tense in tenderness," his mother would address him the second-person were too to plural, "as if the singular thin bear the load of her love" (p. 28). He freeze-frames his father:

... on as his last and loftiest flight, reclining, if for good, against the summer one cobalt blue of the noon, like of those paradisiac per a sonages who comfortably soar, with such wealth of folds in their on a one garments, the vaulted ceiling of church while below, by wax to a swarm one, the tapers in mortal hands light up make of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin, (p. 32)

This may be the most moving passage in the entire book, and its overflow of is of language and love characteristic Speak, Memory. Nabokov's autobiographic impulse is to transform himself, his family, and his friends into medium-level angels. His mother and father, his grandparents, his tutors, his uncles and aunts and cousins, his governesses, his brothers and treats ex sisters, his lovers, his wife, all of these people Nabokov with quisite sympathy. Of his French governess, Mademoiselle, he writes:

I catch my self wondering whether, during the years I knew her, I was more had not kept utterly missing something in her that far she or or even than her chins her ways her French: something perhaps to to akin that last glimpse of her, the radiant deceit she had used in to me own or to order have depart pleased with my kindness, that swan was so to a whose agony much closer artistic truth than droop ing dancer's pale arms; something, in short, that I could appreciate only after the things and beings that I hadmost loved in the security to or of my childhood had been turned ashes shot through the heart, (p. 117)

49 a to There is tragic weight and tone this sentence that Nabokov would not in in be capable of maintaining his fiction. He loves the characters his a to autobiography in way that he refuses love the characters in his or fiction?without qualification self-conscious qualm?because these people (Mother, Father, Mademoiselle, Colette, Vera) compose the population of his life.Nothing can "dim the purity of the pain" (p. 241) of saw not the last time he Colette, Nabokov says, and he is kidding. His love of Vera is so absolute that he refuses to refer to her other than as In on "you." The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the other hand, only Sebas tian and the narrator escape the author's satirical glance. "Mr. Goodman's a large soft pinkish face was, and is, remarkably like cow's udder" (p. 60). Both Clare and the governess are likable characters, but neither one receives the love that her counterpart?Vera, Mademoiselle?receives in Mr. Mr. Speak, Memory. Sheldon, Roy Carswell, Silbermann, Helene as even Grinstein, Paul Pahlich, Uncle Black, Madame LaCerf: suggested are by their names, these characters figures of the author's and reader's fun or concern. rather than objects of admiration When Nabokov's playful no imagination completely dominates, he longer loves his characters. All can he do is laugh.

Design Undone

In writes: "The of thematic Speak, Memory, Nabokov following designs true through one's life should be, I think, the purpose of autobiography" is it is in a sense (p. 27). Although his autobiography chronological, moves one one one to unplotted; it from section, character, city, another on to movements not the basis of narrative but according the of memory, can for only in following such free associations of the mind thematic to design be discovered. Thus, transition from section section is triggered a time after time by the very process of memory. "With sharp and merry blast from the whistle that was part of my first sailor suit, my childhood me calls me back into that distant past to have shake hands again with my next see me delightful teacher" (p. 28). "I my mother leading bedward through the enormous hall" (p. 83). "A bewildering sequence of English nurses and governesses, some of them wringing their hands, others smil me come out to meet me as re-enter ing at enigmatically, I my past" is the ac (p. 86). "Meanwhile the setting has changed" (p. 105). Memory

50 tive agent, the principal protagonist. Nabokov is simply, he claims, the next as come on conduit of these recollections. "The picture looks if it had screen the upside down" (p. 157). Furthermore, virtually every chapter sentence in no to opening Speak, Memory bears necessary plot relation the sentence an last of the preceding chapter, but does bear obvious and pro found relation to the pattern which memory has created and which is the structure of the book. By contrast, in The Real Life of SebastianKnight the movement to scene to scene from place place and is accomplished accord to ing the strict demands of narrative, and particularly temporal, progres a move sion. Chapter after chapter opens with plotted forward in time. "In November of 1918 my mother resolved to flee with Sebastian and myself from the dangers of Russia" (p. 24). "Two months had elapsed was after Sebastian's death when this book started" (p. 33). "Two years I saw had elapsed after my mother's death before Sebastian again" (p. 71). "Their relationship lasted six years" (p. 81). The Real Life of Sebastian Knight was published in 1941, and Speak,Memory in 1966, so in large measure the difference between the two books is the distance travelled be tween art art modernism and post-modernism, between for art's sake and about art. The Real Life of SebastianKnight is amodel for self-reflexive but is finally dramatic fiction, whereas Speak, Memory something like Nar even more cissus squared. Still, if there is palpably contemplation in Under theVolcano than in JKnow Why theCaged Bird Sings, we do approach fic we tion with somewhat different expectations than approach autobiog matter we are are raphy. No how anti-linear the novel, struck by and meant to its to or nar be struck by relation (fulfillment frustration of) an rative, while the reader expects literary autobiography to be examina came tion of the process by which it, and its author, to be.

The Tense Present, The Remembered Past

Both books modulate between the present moment of composition and the remembered past of lived life, but in Speak,Memory that rupture is the book's subjectmatter while in The Real Life of SebastianKnight it seems to more a most moments be little than fictive strategy. Some of the powerful in occur when the time-wall Speak, Memory Nabokov bumps up against between the present and the past.

51 am Very lovely, very lonesome. But what I doing in this stereo scopic dreamland? How did I get here? Somehow, the two sleighs a on have slipped away, leaving behind passportless spy standing the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat. The ears no vibration inmy is longer their receding bells, but only my old blood singing. All is still, spellbound, enthralled by the moon, snow as to fancy's rear-vision mirror. The is real, though, and I bend it a to and scoop up handful, sixty years crumble glittering frost-dust between my fingers, (p. 100)

This passage is about memory, it is awondrous demonstration of its proc esses. not ex Memory is merely being used here; it is under microscopic amination. So, too, when "the process of recreating that penholder and to a the microcosm in its eyelet stimulates my memory last effort. I try to name again recall the of Colette's dog?and, triumphantly, along those remote over beaches, the glossy evening sands of the past, where each sunset footprint slowly fills up with water, here it comes, here it comes, echoing and vibrating: Floss, Floss, Floss!" (p. 152). Here the result is manifestly different from above: memory, through language, rediscovers moment language and succeeds in uniting the present of composition with as the historical instant of "real life." And yet, poignant as these recrea tions is in of recollection are, Nabokov Nabokov, and elsewhere Speak, sees to Memory he fit parody the process by which his book has been organ more ized. "Some about that drawing room, please" (p. 100), he invokes am Mnemosyne. Before he recreates Louise, he writes: "I now going to do a a something quite difficult, kind of double somersault with Welsh wag I Iwant gle (old acrobats will know what mean), and complete silence, please" (p. 204). In The Real Life of SebastianKnight, what few references are to current are there the time of composition all overtly comic. "We was cross at parted. It raining hard and I felt ashamed and having inter to rupted my second chapter make this useless pilgrimage" (p. 23), the narrator at remarks the conclusion of the second chapter. Much later, he says: "As the reader may have noticed, I have tried to put into this book as little of my own self as possible" (p. 141). The Real Life of SebastianKnight juxtaposes?nearly chapter-for-chapter?Sebastian's life in the past with an Sebastian's half-brother's quest for understanding of Sebastian's life in as an the present, and surely this juxtaposition is meant emblem for the

52 relation between the artist recollecting life and the artist living life, but the not novel does explore the process of memory the way the autobiography more does. The only book that studies nostalgic consciousness acutely is than Speak, Memory Nabokov's third favorite work of the twentieth A as century, Remembrance of Things Past, and surely Proust is much as to autobiographer novelist. It's easier for autobiography be about itself as a than fiction is because, by the very definition of itself genre, autobiog raphy is obsessed with the consciousness of its creator in the process of of most seizing the self. Much the interesting fiction of the last forty years to has appropriated the techniques of autobiography shift the focus from the garden to the window, the eye to the "I."

Language Is All

In is serious in Speak, Memory heavy alliteration used for poetic effect while The Real Life of SebastianKnight the alliteration tends to appear at inappro times and thus is comic. In we priate Speak, Memory, get "my father's fa vorite flower" (p. 29), "fantastic flotilla of swans and skiffs" (p. 85), "de lighting in every limb of every limpid letter" (p. 105), "a big black mare me more a one followed for than mile" (p. 131), and "In particular pine grove everything fell into place, I parted the fabric of fancy, I tasted real occur at ity" (p. 232). All of these alliterative phrases emotional moments text. to in the Alliteration tends be the signature of lyrical expression, and is most most Speak, Memory the consistently lyrical, insistently alliterative ever wrote. an book Vladimir Nabokov Triple alliteration is thus appro in priate emblem for autobiography that it is indulgent, self-conscious, as self-referential, serious, enraptured with both itself expression and its as In we succes material subject. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight get "a sion of funerals and "a in or a fireworks" (p. 66), picture Punch purple in a passage Hamlet" (p. 68), and, especially, "the whole book being but on glorious gamble causalities or, if you prefer, the probing of the aetio secret or logical of aleatory occurrences" (p. 96). This is bad, at least lim ited, Nabokov: writing meant to point up the barriers, rather than meant to the resources of beautiful writing explore language. Speak, was written Memory twenty-five years after The Real Life of Sebastian so some it to Knight, in ways is unfair compare the two books. But the alliteration in as to truly serious, truly poetic Speak, Memory, opposed

53 comic and parodistic repetition inThe Real Life of SebastianKnight, reveals the difference between Nabokov-the-autobiographer and Nabokov-the fabulator. For if in fiction he can deflect through irony the fact that "our a existence is but brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (Speak,Memory, p. 19), in autobiography he is allowed and he allows him to to own ex self surrender completely the lugubrious melodrama of his istence.

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