1977年冬，森堯學長從倫敦來Colchester訪我。他跟我說《說吧！記憶》值得一讀。我到圖書館拿起這本舊書，就像蔣彝先生的《倫敦啞行》那般舊。不過，後者還有彩色圖詩，而納布可夫的，只是文字的魅力。數十年之後我看到”兩岸”的翻譯本，都沒什麼味道。
「在我寫詩寫到無可救藥的時候，只有兩種選擇：不是把一首詩寫完，就是死亡。」——納博可夫，《說吧，記憶》
「在我寫詩寫到無可救藥的時候，只有兩種選擇：不是把一首詩寫完，就是死亡。」——納博可夫，《說吧，記憶》
"One is always at home in one's past, which partly explains those pathetic ladies' posthumous love for another country, which they never had really known and in which none of them had been very content."
--from SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov
--from SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov
From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman's Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously unpublished "Chapter 16"–the most significant unpublished piece of writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate–which provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.