Whispers and Games
Robertson, Priscilla
Whispers and Games Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited, by Vladimir Nabokov. Putnam. 316 pp. $6.75. Reviewed by Priscilla Robertson T7"ladimir nabokov can do whatever ^ he wants to with...
...Though his own story is less far-fetched than those of his fictional heroes, he is utterly delightful in catching the whispers of his Russian childhood (recreating past time as no one since Proust) and at the same time keeping up his word games (like no one since Joyce...
...Speak, Memory tells richly of this environment, of Nabokov's own formal and informal education, of his first loves, of the growth of his interest in science (he is an accomplished lepidopterist...
...He had been a member of the unhappy Duma that refused to obey the Czar's dissolution order in 1906...
...LUCY JOHNSON is a free lance book critic...
...If any have wondered whether his verbal inventiveness would be lessened by describing the actuality of his own life, the answer is no...
...but even solitary confinement in those days was adjusted to gentlemen, so that the elder Nabokov took along to his solitary cell books, a collapsible bathtub, and a manual of gymnastic exercises...
...THE REVIEWERS C. WALTER CLARK, JR...
...The Nabokovs were an immensely wealthy family in the Czarist aristocracy, complete with a St...
...But, presumably because the greatest art is to conceal art, he enlightens us little about his growth as a writer...
...Butcher and Blitzen...
...Yet, in spite of its political conscience, the impression is strong of a family and of a whole social class floating on the surface of Russian society...
...As for his gambols with words, here is what he says of one famous Russian: "Political exiles escaped from Siberia with farcical ease, witness the famous flight of Trotsky—Santa Leo, Santa Claws Trotsky—merrily riding back in a Yuletide sleigh drawn by reindeer: On Rocket, on, Stupid, on...
...GERALD L. SBARBORO, an attorney active in politics, was formerly legislative counsel to Senator Paul H. Douglas...
...Surely his skill cannot all have come from that period when he read ten pages of the dictionary daily...
...The moment he was released the whole family set off for a vacation in the south of France...
...but what is that rose doing there...
...In his introduction he mentions the index, an ordinary index except that the long Russian triple names with the maiden names of the women make the entries longer than usual...
...teaches political science at Drake University...
...an ephemeral group, easily erased...
...The last fifth tells about life as an exile in Euorpe, his going to Cambridge, and the years of his own child's babyhood in France...
...PRISCILLA ROBERTSON is a former editor of The Humanist...
...Reviewed by Priscilla Robertson T7"ladimir nabokov can do whatever ^ he wants to with words, apparently in three languages...
...Four-fifths of the book evokes life in Russia from his earliest memory in 1903 until the family fled in 1919...
...Petersburg mansion, a country estate, and fifty servants, including many varieties of tutors and governesses...
...They had a large, warm family life, and they possessed integrity of a sort that sent Vladimir's father to prison for his liberalism...
...He spent three years as a graduate student in Asian studies at Indiana University...
...Ovid, like Nabokov, wrote a volume from exile near the Black Sea where the Nabokovs made their exit from Russia...
...On Freud the play is hidden a bil deeper: he is trying to recall a somewhat confused memory of his mother which took place in their Biarritz apartment "under the windows of which, in a roped-off section of the square, a huge custard-colored balloon was being inflated by Sigismond Le-joyeux, a local aeronaut...
...this is well known to readers of Lolita and Pale Fire...
...One last puzzle...
...In 194C he sailed for America where, he tells us, he felt instantly cured of his "exiled" feelings and at home...
...He assures us that the index will "please the discerning, if only because Through the windows of that Index Climbs a rose And sometimes a gentle wind ex Ponto blows...
...His poem was entitled Ex Ponto...
Vol. 31 • May 1967 • No. 5
