Through the juxtaposition of early autobiographical fragments by Lev Tolstoi and Daniil Kharms, Sara Pankenier argues that both writers similarly push beyond the limits of memory to recover the infant self from the abyss of infantile amnesia. Their accounts of preternatural memory and precocious self-awareness counter the phenomenon, which psychologists now term infantile amnesia, whereby the onset of memory occurs only several years after birth. They thus flagrantly violate human experience, as well as the literary conventions that otherwise govern the representation of infancy. By endowing the infant self with adult memory—and narrative voice—these writers create a hybrid autobiographical self that unites the divided autobiographical subject posited by Philippe Lejeune. Despite the differences in their tragic and comic tone, both Tolstoi and Kharms employ the infant subject to explore issues of power and voice through narrative experimentation in an uncharted region of memory otherwise made inaccessible by infantile amnesia.