BOOKS BY
NOVELS
SHORT FICTION
DRAMA
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND INTERVIEWS
BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM
TRANSLATIONS
LETTERS
MISCELLANEOUS
First Vintage International Edition, August 1989
Copyright 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, © 1967 by Vladimir Nabokov
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published, in different form, by Harper & Bros., New York, in 1951. This edition published by arrangement with the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899–1977.
Speak, memory: an autobiography revisited / by
Vladimir Nabokov.
p. cm.—(Vintage international)
Rev. ed. of: Conclusive evidence. 1951.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78773-6
1. Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899–1977—Biography.
2. Authors, Russian—20th century—Biography. 3. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899–1977. Conclusive evidence. II. Title.
PG3476.N3Z477 1989
813’.54—dc 19
[B] 88-40528
Cover art by Michael Bierut
Cover photograph by Alison Gootee
v3.1
Contents
Foreword
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Foreword
THE present work is a systematically correlated assemblage of personal recollections ranging geographically from St. Petersburg to St. Nazaire, and covering thirty-seven years, from August 1903 to May 1940, with only a few sallies into later space-time. The essay that initiated the series corresponds to what is now Chapter Five. I wrote it in French, under the title of “Mademoiselle O,” thirty years ago in Paris, where Jean Paulhan published it in the second issue of
