First, don’t use Variable anymore! Be modern!
Regarding your question, the next_functions will allow you to traverse the recorded calculation graph (“backward graph”).
The backward graph will end in AccumulateGrad nodes for the leaves (they have a .variable attribute pointing to the leaf tensor) - and yours does pretty quickly as you only have one operation. Let’s have a slightly more elaborate one:
a = torch.randn(1, requires_grad=True)
b = a*(a+2)
print (b.grad_fn.next_functions)
print (b.grad_fn.next_functions[1][0].next_functions)
print (b.grad_fn.next_functions[0][0].variable is a)
gives
((<AccumulateGrad object at 0x7fbe7aa96780>, 0), (<AddBackward0 object at 0x7fbe7aa96748>, 0))
((<AccumulateGrad object at 0x7fbe7aa96780>, 0), (None, 0))
True
So in ‘x*(x+2)’ you have one branch for x and one for x+2 and the latter has a x branch and an uninteresting 2 branch.
Except at the leaves, you cannot, in general access the variables of the calculation from the graph.
Best regards
Thomas