The Nonidentical Twin: The Possible Worlds of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and Look at the Harlequins!

The article examines how Vladimir Nabokov probes the boundaries between autobiography and fiction in his autobiography, Speak, Memory, and his last finished novel, Look at the Harlequins! Both autobiographies and first-person novels project possible worlds, that is, alternative perspectives on empirical reality. The Nabokov of Speak, Memory and V.V. in Look at the Harlequins! are both focalizers in possible worlds derived from the historical Nabokov’s empirical reality. The common origin that binds them together opens up a multi-directional channel between the worlds, allowing the reader to gain a deeper understanding of Nabokov’s life story than either of the texts could offer on its own. Nabokov’s two texts highlight the fundamental similarities between the nonfictional genre of the autobiography and the fictional genre of the novel by exploring the transitory zone between fiction and reality. (BGY)