The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Encyclopedia
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, written from late 1938 to early 1939, and published in 1941 by New Directions Publishers
New Directions Publishers
New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin. The company was incorporated in 1964 as the New Directions Publishing Corporation and operates from New York City, and its books today are distributed by WW Norton & Company. Its...
.
Composition
Nabokov's first major work in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
was composed in Paris while the author sat in the bathroom, his valise set across a bidet
Bidet
A bidet is a low-mounted plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the genitalia, inner buttocks, and anus. It was originally a French word.-History:...
as a writing desk. Nabokov retreated into the washroom to write.
Plot summary
The narratorNarrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
, V., is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of his half-brother the famous Russian-born English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
novelist, Sebastian Knight (1899–1936). In the course of his quest he tracks down Sebastian's acquaintances from Cambridge, and interviews friends and acquaintances, including friends Helen Pratt and P.G. Sheldon, the poet Alexis Pan, and the painter Roy Carswell.
In the course of his biography V. also reviews Sebastian's books (see below) and attempts to refute the views of the "misleading" biography by Knight's former secretary Mr. Goodman, The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight. Goodman maintains that Knight was too aloof and cut off from real life.
V. concludes that, after a long-running romantic relationship with Clare Bishop, Sebastian's final years were addled by a love affair with another woman--a Russian whom he presumably met at a hotel in Blauberg, where Sebastian spent time recuperating from heart ailments in in June 1929. V. leaves for Blauberg, where, with the help of a unpredictable private detective, he acquires a list of the names of four women who were staying at the hotel during the same time period as Sebastian: Mademoiselle Lidya Bohemsky, of Paris; Madame de Rechnoy, also of Paris; Helene Grinstein, of Berlin; and Helene von Graun, who, despite her German name, spoke Russian and also lived in Paris.
V. is intent on tracking down each of the women to interview them. After dismissing the possibility of Helene Grinstein, his search leads him to Paris, and the list narrows to two candidates: Mme de Rechnoy and Mme von Graun. V. first suspects Mme de Rechnoy of being the mystery woman based on a compelling description from her ex-husband, Pahl Palich Rechnoy. Mme de Rechnoy has left her husband and can not be located, leaving V. unsatisfied.
However, after meeting Mme von Graun's friend, Mme Nina Lecerf, and hearing stories of von Graun's unflattering affair with a Russian, V. becomes convinced that Helene von Graun is the woman in question. Nina invites V. to visit her in the country, where Helene will be staying with the Lecerfs. V. accepts, and, worried that he will miss his prey, writes a brief letter to Helene announcing his intention to meet her there.
At the country house V. finds that Helene von Graun has not yet arrived. He mentions his letter to Nina, which angers her. Through a series of subtle exchanges, V. learns that it is Nina Lecerf herself, and not Helene von Graun, who was Sebastian's final romance. Nina was, in fact, the Mme de Rechnoy who V. had originally suspected, but never met.
The final chapters of the narration deal with The Doubtful Asphodel, Sebastian's final novel, which is centered on a dying man and his slow decay. V.'s description of then novel reveals similarities and coincidence not only with Sebastian's life, but with V.'s own investigative adventures. V. tries to account for Sebastian's final years, including a last, cryptic letter from Sebastian asking V. to visit him at a hospital in France. As V. makes the trip to France, his ties to his own life become increasingly visible for their tenuousness: his employer strains his ability to travel, he struggles to remember necessary details such as the hospital name, he even lacks sufficient money to travel efficiently. V. finally arrives at the hospital and listens to his sleeping brother's breathing from a separate room, only to discover that the sleeping man is not his brother, but an English man. Sebastian Knight had died the night before.
The novel concludes with a philosophical reconciliation of Sebastian's life, and a final implication that V. himself is Sebastian Knight, or at least an incarnation of his soul.
Allusions
Nina’s and V. differing attitudes and expectations of the situation make it an interesting quest to analyse the motivations behind their use of language. The intentional change of V.’s behaviour and Nina’s up and down mood result in speech behaviour that is expressed through different emotional attitudes not the least visible in their body language. While the expectations of each other are disguised by Nina’s betrayal, V.’s final coming of age about Nina finishes an emotional tension that built up constantly. The situative context and history between the two persons in a drama like combination has its literary predecessors in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, mark the homonym of Sebastian’s second name Knight, Shakespeare’s Viola and Sebastian appear with Nabokov as V. and Sebastian. On ChekhovAnton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
’s influence, Nina’s lap dog has already been mentioned.
Comments
The reader does not learn the first and last names of the narrator; Nabokov later writes to his biographer Andrew Field that "V stands for VictorVictor (name)
Victor is a masculine given name that has been used for centuries in numerous cultures and parts of the world. Of Latin origin, victor means " conquers" and may also be spelled Viktor, Vítor or Víctor...
." Three interpretations have been proposed regarding the relationship between the narrator and his subject - that V and SK are meant to be distinct persons, that SK invented V, and that V invented SK - and all of them seem possible.
There are chess themes abound, as seen in names (Knight, Bishop), direct descriptions, references to black and white, and "moves" made by people. (Nina) Rechnoy's name is an anagram of "chernoy" (Russian for "black") and her birthname is Toorovetz (Russian "tura" for rook). Themes and aspects of SK's books are worked into V's narration.
Through biographical research and SK's books, V comes to trace, understand and repeat the "moves" (in the chess sense) made by his sibling. As an academic project transformed into what Charles Kinbote
Charles Kinbote
Charles Kinbote is the unreliable narrator in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire.-Academic work:Kinbote appears to be the scholarly author of the Foreword, Commentary and Index surrounding the text of the late John Shade's poem "Pale Fire", which together form the text of Nabokov's novel...
would call "the monstrous semblance of a novel," Sebastian Knight operates as a kind of trial run of the author's later novel Pale Fire
Pale Fire
Pale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
.
The novel contains biographical aspects that later are seen in Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory is an autobiographical memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov.-Scope:The book is dedicated to his wife, Véra, and covers his life from 1903 until his emigration to America in 1940. The first twelve chapters describe Nabokov's remembrance of his youth in an aristocratic family living in...
, including the birth and upbringing in St. Petersburg, the flight from revolutionary Russia, the untimely death of the father, living as an expatriate in England/ France, a visit to a Swiss governess, and the change from writing in Russian to English. And just as V has a complex relationship with his brother, Nabokov has also a complicated relationship to his brother Sergey.
Books by Sebastian Knight
The narrator discusses the following (fictitious) works by SK:- The Prismatic BezelBezelBezel may refer to:* Bezel setting, or bezel, the rim which encompasses and fastens a jewel, watch crystal, lens or other object* The sloping facets of the crown of a cut gem such as in diamond cutting...
, Sebastian's first novel, "a rollicking parody of the setting of a detective tale" reflected in V's search for SK's Russian lover. - Success, Sebastian's second novel, traces "the exact way in which two lines of life were made to come into contact" (forming a "V", like V's narration)
- Lost Property, Sebastian's memoir. "A counting of the things and souls lost" on SK's "literary journey of discovery", a counting reflected in V's narration.
- "The Funny Mountain", a short story
- "Albinos in Black", a short story
- "The Back of the Moon", - this short story includes a Mr. Siller whose likeness resurfaces in V's narration as Mr. Silbermann,
- The Doubtful Asphodel, this book is about "A man is dying, and he is the hero of the tale . . . The man is the book; the book itself is heaving and dying, and drawing up a ghostly knee"(175) and may be seen as a reflection on V's book.
Quotes
- "The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition" (Lost Property,page 83). (page 105)
- Also see wikiquote's Nabokov entry.
Critical response
Nabokov's friend, correspondent, and sometime antagonist Edmund WilsonEdmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
called Sebastian Knight his favorite among the author's works.
A new reading by Gerard de Vries "The True Life of Sebastian Knight", presenting Colonel Samain in the role usually attributed to Nina Rechnoy, is published by Zembla, the official site of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society.