In his memoir "Speak Memory," Vladimir Nabokov recalls the emotional richness of his childhood, especially his tender relationship with his mother, Elena. He was her favorite child, and she showered him with love. She also showered him with her memories, which she shared as stories and shards of stories if the complete tale was no longer remembered.
Young Vladimir thus accumulated received memories as well as his own.
The Nabokovs were wealthy Russians who suffered a calamitous break with their past, losing almost everything to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Nabokov's father, who shared the same first name as his son, was a prominent lawyer active in reform politics until the triumphant revolutionaries forced him to lead his family into exile.
Memories were Vladimir Nabokov's inheritance. He called his inheritance, in a stunning burst of imagination, "unreal estate."
Every one of us has "unreal estate." No deed or proper legal description required.
Yet academic research has demonstrated how fallible memory can be. It is not beyond a reasonable doubt that eye witnesses can be very wrong. Courts have taken notice. Criminal convictions based on eye witness testimony have been overturned. Law enforcement has become careful when taking statements from eye witnesses and presenting witnesses with lineups.
If there was a video tape of an incident you were involved in years ago would it match your memories?
How trustworthy is memory, even when it has gone beyond speaking, as it did to Nabokov, and shouts?
Many moons ago, a friend told the following story.
He was the only child of New York cabaret musicians who had a tumultuous marriage. The unhappy couple separated. They sent their boy to live with a grandfather, a bluff, loud, cranky man who drove truck. My friend was intimidated by his grandfather and spoke to him only when necessary.
A couple years after my friend moved in, the grandfather suddenly died. My friend, who was 9 when this occurred, remembered his grandfather's death this way.
The two of them were in their apartment kitchen, and my friend, frustrated by his overbearing grandfather, lost his temper and began yelling at the old man. The grandfather sullenly endured the boy's wrath. Then collapsed never to rise.
The story my friend told lacked detail. It was sparse, like the description of a dream.
A couple years before he met me, my friend, grown to young manhood, told the story of the grandfather's death at a family reunion. An older cousin jumped in -- "Hey, you have it all wrong." The cousin went on to say he had been in the kitchen when the grandfather died.
"Larry, you got things backward," continued the cousin. "You were not yelling at him; he was yelling at you." Larry, who was studying to become a psychologist, struggled to comprehend how he could have been so wrong. He wondered if he was determined to blame himself for the old man's death, never mind the facts. He recognized "the facts" included his smoldering resentment of the grandfather's high-handed ways, and his abject dependence on the man. Maybe, the budding psychologist speculated, he had developed a wish that his grandfather would die. Maybe the wish rearranged his memory.
Maybe. Larry remained uncertain what to think after listening to his cousin.
His grandfather's death had become "unreal estate" that had fallen into contested ownership.
Michael Carey is an Alaska Dispatch News columnist. He can be reached at mcarey@alaskadispach.com.
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