Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory (1951)
Chapter 8 explores in detail the rich nostalgia of Vladimir Nabokov who was born into a privileged family in tsarist St Petersburg and spent his entire adult life in exile—in England, Europe, the United States, and finally in Switzerland. His need to recall patches of the past, and to reclaim his lost childhood, found expression in the autobiographical essays collected in Speak, Memory, the original title of which was to have been Speak, Mnemosyne (calling to mind the opening words of the Odyssey, ‘Tell me, Muse’). As the chapter reveals, it is the very condition of exile that provides Nabokov with an identity and in which, as an artist, he revels and luxuriates. For him nostalgia is a higher form of consciousness and nostalgic writing an act of ecstatic devotion.