ABSTRACT
Vladimir Nabokov claims in this chapter that the harmonious world of a perfect childhood possesses 'a naturally plastic form in one's memory, which can be set down with hardly any effort', whereas the recollections of adolescence make Mnemosyne 'choosy and crabbed'. Nabokov believes that the temptation to blend biography and fiction must be resisted at all costs because it gives rise to those '"biographies romances" which are by far the worst kind of literature yet invented', and requires instead 'a delicate meeting place between imagination and knowledge'. The great attraction of 'Speak, Memory' is that, whilst Nabokov is always pointing out how this connects with that, there are any amount of important connections that the author leaves the reader to work out for himself. 'Speak, Memory' has the 'yielding diaphanous texture of time' that Nabokov experienced in Cambridge, so that ultimately 'Nothing one look at shut off in terms of time, everything a natural opening into it'.
