The greatest literary memoir of the 20th century, Vladimir Nabokov’s “Speak, Memory,” ends with an emblematic image, that of Nabokov standing alongside his 6-year-old son Dmitri as they gaze at the ship that will carry them from France to safety. Over the preceding pages, the author has survived numerous losses and brushes with danger, fleeing not one but two totalitarian regimes: the Soviets and the Nazis. And while that memoir has many moving moments, none are more so than those dedicated to filial love — Nabokov’s love for his father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, assassinated in 1922, and for his young son, Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov.

Dmitri Nabokov — opera singer, race car driver, translator, and, perhaps, spy — died last month in Vevey, Switzerland, at the age of 77. In his later years, he was best known as the curator of his father’s literary estate, and — most notably — for the scandal sparked by his publication of an unfinished work his father wanted destroyed, “The Original of Laura.” But long before “Laura,” Dmitri Nabokov was known for activities in stark contrast to those his father enjoyed.

Sons generally want to be like their fathers, all the more so when their fathers are kind, caring, loving, and remarkably talented. And yet sons also need to be different from their fathers. Few families demonstrate this more clearly than the three generations of Nabokov men presented in “Speak, Memory.” Vladimir Nabokov’s father was a renowned jurist and a prominent and courageous political figure. His eldest son — who would go on to be one of the greatest writers of the century — revered his father and yet showed not a glimmer of interest in either law or politics, turning his energies instead to literature and lepidoptery.

By the time that he in turn became a father, Vladimir Nabokov displayed a startling array of talents, but there were two things which he could not do. He had a nearly complete inability to enjoy or interest himself in music (to the point that Oliver Sacks includes him in a list of music-related pathologies). And despite far above average intelligence and excellent hand-eye coordination (he taught tennis and boxing as a young man, and hunted butterflies up and down Alpine slopes well into his 70s), he proved stubbornly unable to learn to drive a car.

And so it is notable that his son Dmitri first embarked on parallel careers as an opera singer and race car driver, only to dedicate the final decades of his life to his father’s literary legacy. His choice of careers, like that of his father before him, reveals something fundamental about the tension between becoming your own man and becoming your father.

Son of a Nabokov