Summary and overview of key concepts

Simic

Nabokov

Speak, Memory is Vladamir Nabakov's autobiography, issued in segments rather than telling a chronological narrative of events. The first three chapters of Speak, Memory set the stage of the tone and style of the autobiography. Nabokov places his life story within a greater cosmological construct. He delves into metaphysical and existential aspects of the self, and then weaves this discussion in with the details of his childhood. Thus, for Nabokov, it is more important to have a universal framework than a culture-specific framework. This position makes perfect sense in light of Nabokov's life as he travels and expatriates.

In Chapter One of Speak, Memory, Nabokov begins with existential and metaphysical musings. He ponders the "two eternities of darkness" that constitute the pre-natal existence and the post-mortem existence (21). Between the two spheres of darkness and the unknown is the "brief crack of light" that is a person's life. This is how Nabokov begins his autobiography: not discussing immediately the details of his birth or where his parents were from, but instead on the mystery of human life. Nabokov notes that it is much easier to think about the darkness that came before birth, which was a moment of comfort. The darkness that comes after death is the hard part, for most people, who feel the "encroaching air of a coffin," (21). The author refrains from bridging the metaphysics with the memoir. First, Nabokov ponders the way his life has been a continual struggle to find meaning and fulfillment. He rejects the new theories of Sigmund Freud, who reduces reality to a set of sexual symbols and objects. However, Nabokov has "tried everything…short of suicide" to discover what it means to be alive. This is the theme he explores in Chapter One.

As he discusses the "awakening of consciousness," Nabokov delves into his childhood in an unconventional manner for an autobiography (21). He actually tries to probe deep into the time before memories were born, which is where his title, "Speak, Memory" derives from. Nabokov is begging his memories to speak to him and offer clues to the meaning not just of his life but also of life itself for all of humanity. He became aware that time is "a prison," and that probing time is an act of self-liberation. Rather than view one's life as a linear progression, it can be fruitful to examine the constituent parts and the whole from a non-linear framework.

Once he reaches the age of four, Nabokov's memories become more coherent in the traditional way or in the way his adult readers can appreciate. The memories of the young Nabokov are still non-linear, though. They are fragments. He was "plunged abruptly into a radiant and mobile medium," (22). As he recalls the first moment he realized that his mother was the "twenty-seven-year-old being…holding his left hand," and that his father was "the thirty-three-year-old being…holding his right hand," Nabokov comes to tell the story of his childhood in an area near St. Petersburg called Vyra. 1903 was the year of the birth of his "sentient life," (22). Nabokov's childhood was privileged. His family was wealthy, and so was Vyra itself. He describes the ways he used to play with the furniture in the house.

Chapters Two and Three continue in this manner, as the author offers rich details about the rich life that he and his family enjoyed in Vyra. There are anecdotes interspersed with descriptions, which consume the bulk of the narrative. Impressions and descriptions of people, places, and things comprise the bulk of the first three chapters of Speak, Memory. Nabokov's memories do speak to him, in non-verbal and non-linear ways that allow the author to bridge the gap between past, present, and future. As he gets deeper into the narrative, Nabokov starts to insert more "adult" commentary related to the historical context growing up during the Revolution.

Simic

Charles Simic's poem "My Mother Was a Braid of Black Smoke" appears in New and Selected Poems, 1962-2012. The poem is the story of the poet's genesis, and it is difficult for the reader to distinguish between what is actual memory and what is the impression or imagination of the speaker. The first stanza starts, "My mother was a braid of black smoke." The imagery in this stanza, with his mother's "swaddling," conveys the sense that Simic's childhood was not a wealthy or happy one. The cities were "burning cities," perhaps reference to the outbreak of war. When the speaker says "We met many others who were just like us," the reader gets the sense that they were outcasts. This imagery is in direct contradiction with the second stanza's imagery. For instance, the second stanza refers to gypsies, and distinguishes the speaker's family from the gypsies. "I was stolen by the gypsies. My parents stole me right back," is the first line of the second stanza. He describes the "caravan" and "sucking the dark teat of my / new mother." The speaker then claims that when his mother took him back, he was sitting in "the long dining room table eating / my breakfast with a silver spoon." The imagery of his "two" fathers is also ambiguous as if to suggest that the narrator had a double life, or a childhood of conflicted identity.

The next few stanzas take on the shape of paragraphs. The style is somewhere between poetry and prose. The third stanza begins, "She's pressing me gently with a hot steam iron." The imagery of being a puppet blends in soon with imagery of the war and difficult times. "Never since the beginning of the world has there been so little light. Our winter afternoons have been known at times to last a hundred years." (111). Imagery of poverty returns, as the speaker states, "We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap." In beatnik style, Simic writes about his mother using obscure similes and metaphors. "My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar." The word "cellar" and the word "collar" have consonance.