Vladimir Nabokov: The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight

[Gem]

Unfortunately "V" is all we get. Some say it may stand for Vladimirovich. /shrugs shoulders/ No certainty though.
Somewhere he claims that he doesn't want to draw undue attention to himself. We can make of that what we will.

Thanks pontalba. Great, the why of it will now bug me. Why do we only get a V? What does it all mean!?

Can't wait for your impressions though!

So far...I hadn't thought that I would enjoy this quite as much as i have done. So much of it has stuck in my head, he really does write rather beautifully. The Alexis and Larissa Pan depiction made me smile, we get such a brief glimpse at them, yet they were so vivid. In that one glimpse we see their whole life. Amazing really.

 

[Peder]

Hello,

I haven't read this thread yet as I just started reading the book earlier this evening, and have about 50 pages to go. But could someone please tell me whether we ever find out who V is? I'm beginning to suspect we don't and it'll be one of those questions that i'll constantly think about.

EDIT: I didn't exactly write that very clearly; I meant do we find out his name.

Gem,
Good to see you.
Your sentence was clear enough for Nabokovians.
But to hitch-hike on Pontalba's answer, V is indeed all we get, and I think just exactly once, when Sebastian calls him that.
But save your question, because by the end you may indeed be asking who V is, again. Let us know when you are done, so we don't tromple on the ending for you. Then we can all wonder together.
Peder

 

[Peder]

I think Sebastian (Nabokov) means that the asphodel's very existance is doubtful. And if the flowers existance is doubtful, so are its surroundings...."the other side". Dead book = dead body.

Pontalba,
That's about what I could make of it.
I finally paired up "this side" on p.175

"only half of the notion of death can be said to really exist: this side"

with "other shore" on p.178

"The asphodel on the other shore is as doubtful as ever"

to indicate the two realms, of life and of death, with Sebastian's silence leaving us as in the dark as ever (doubtful) regarding the other half of the question, namely life after death. The asphodel on the other shore would symbolize life, if it existed, and it would be growing on that other shore which is the edge of the domain of death. So death is still certain, and the asphodel is still doubtful. Easier to envision than describe.
Which is almost what you said?
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
That's about what I could make of it.
I finally paired up "this side" on p.175

with "other shore" on p.178

to indicate the two realms, of life and of death, with Sebastian's silence leaving us as in the dark as ever (doubtful) regarding the other half of the question, namely life after death. The asphodel on the other shore would symbolize life, if it existed, and it would be growing on that other shore which is the edge of the domain of death. So death is still certain, and the asphodel is still doubtful. Easier to envision than describe.
Which is almost what you said?
Peder

Yes, thats what I meant. I'd missed the quote on p. 175 though....but it was still the impression I got from the later quote from 178.
IOW we all know death all too well, but Nabokov is saying that what lies beyond death is doubtful. IMO

 

[Peder]

Yes, thats what I meant. I'd missed the quote on p. 175 though....but it was still the impression I got from the later quote from 178.
IOW we all know death all too well, but Nabokov is saying that what lies beyond death is doubtful. IMO

Pontalba,
I've been wrestling with that word "doubtful," and whether Nabokov meant it in the sense "unlikely to be so" or perhaps in the sense "not known or knowable." Because the former sense seems more like common usage, but OTOH he has so many allusions to spirits and ghostly connections with the departed dead that I wonder which way he means it, either in SK, or even in real life. A question which has come up before. And which will certainly figure in the last scene of the book.
/Scratching head in advance
And looking for a key quote,/
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
I've been wrestling with that word "doubtful," and whether Nabokov meant it in the sense "unlikely to be so" or perhaps in the sense "not known or knowable." Because the former sense seems more like common usage, but OTOH he has so many allusions to spirits and ghostly connections with the departed dead that I wonder which way he means it, either in SK, or even in real life. A question which has come up before. And which will certainly figure in the last scene of the book.
/Scratching head in advance
And looking for a key quote,/
Peder

Perhaps VN is doing his balancing bit.
And yes, I see what you mean about the end.
VN did know how to smack a reader in the head with his endings.

 

[Peder]

Perhaps VN is doing his balancing bit.
And yes, I see what you mean about the end.
VN did know how to smack a reader in the head with his endings.

Pontalba,
I've been looking for a few quotes I can't find which really leave the ending, and the book, open to ALL sorts of interpretation and, once we open the flood gates away from the literal word, we may NEVER know what he had in mind. But I am looking forward to a very interesting discussion anyway, no matter what turns up!
Peder

 

[pontalba]

One thing that is obvious.....Sebastian was reaching for his roots in more ways than one in the end. He knew of course he was dying, but the letter he sent V wasn't all that urgent sounding, at least to V who didn't even realize the extent of Sebastian's illness. The interesting thing to me was that Sebastian wrote it in Russian. And the doctor used the Russian form of Sebastian's name in his telegram to V.

And that train ride.........

 

[Peder]

One thing that is obvious.....Sebastian was reaching for his roots in more ways than one in the end. He knew of course he was dying, but the letter he sent V wasn't all that urgent sounding, at least to V who didn't even realize the extent of Sebastian's illness. The interesting thing to me was that Sebastian wrote it in Russian. And the doctor used the Russian form of Sebastian's name in his telegram to V.

And that train ride.........

Pontalba,
Well, maybe no or maybe yes, in retrospect. That final sentence,

So forgive me if I bore you, but somehow I don't much like those bare branches and twigs which I see from my window.

sounds to me like perhaps he is seeing them as a symbol of the bleak prospect for his future. Especially if they are not a real view from a real window but a metaphorical turn of phrase that he is using to express indirectly the idea of his desolation. But yes the letter has a deliberately casual tone about it that masks the urgency he was probably feeling. Any urgency would have to be inferred from the unusual fact that he asked to see V at all, I would suppose. And V didn't pick up on that. Perhaps the overall tone is of a man without hope.
Sebastian mentions that he started writing the letter to someone else. Its being in Russian immediately suggests to me that it started out as a last attempt to contact Nina.
So I read it, as you do, as a very sad attempt by Sebastian to reach out in any direction he could to establish contact with any of the significant people in his life that he could.
Coupled in my mind with his final scene with Nina, just sitting silently with his hands resting on top of his cane, the two scenes to me show a man finally at rock bottom and completely lost in the world with no place to turn. He just sat at Nina's place saying nothing, doing nothing, because he realized she was done with him and he was at an impasse. He knew there was nothing he could say that would interest her. He knew he no longer had anything he could offer her that would interest her. And he knew that she was totally uninterested in him. Yet he was still hopelessly in love with her and still wanted to at least be in her presence, even if he could do nothing else. Maybe I'm being overly melodramatic, but it paints an exceedingly sad picture for me.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Yesss....it makes sense that it was first addressed to Nina, but is it just me, or does the first part of the letter (obstensibly addressed to Nina) seem un-ex-lover-like?

...but it might be perhaps better if you came.

I don't know. A bit off-hand....by design? The next sentence does sound like it could be to Nina....

I am fed up [osskomina] with a number of tortuous things and especially with the patterns of my shed snake-skins [vypolziny] so that now I find a poetic solace in the obvious and the ordinary which for some reason or other I had overlooked in the course of my life.

Now that last...shedding...snakeskins... Is Sebastian telling Nina that he has shed her and he wishes to make peace with her on another level? It almost sounds as though he has finally realized that he should not have "shed" Clare (the "ordinary" that was overlooked?).
I agree the bare branches certainly stand in for his desolate life-view and his sorrow for the future he will not enjoy.

 

[pontalba]

This morning, as I reread the letter, it occurs to me that it was in fact possibly written to Clare to begin with. The part where he says

...I find a poetic solace in the obvious and the ordinary which for some reason or other I had overlooked in the course of my life.

He certainly "overlooked" Clare, and in comparison to Nina, Clare was ordinary.

I like to think that in the end Sebastian realized his error and wanted to reach out to Clare, and in mid-letter for whatever reason he realized that hope was in vain. Maybe he realized she was married, she even could have been pregnant at the time of writing this letter. Sebastian would have known it was hopeless to try to woe her back.

 

[Peder]

Yesss....it makes sense that it was first addressed to Nina, but is it just me, or does the first part of the letter (ostensibly addressed to Nina) seem un-ex-lover-like? I don't know. A bit off-hand....by design? The next sentence does sound like it could be to Nina....
Now that last...shedding...snakeskins... Is Sebastian telling Nina that he has shed her and he wishes to make peace with her on another level? It almost sounds as though he has finally realized that he should not have "shed" Clare (the "ordinary" that was overlooked?).
I agree the bare branches certainly stand in for his desolate life-view and his sorrow for the future he will not enjoy.

Pontalba,
The letter is certainly anything but passionate. But the seemingly off-hand "perhaps it would be better if you came," reads to me like his saying "I make it sound as if it makes no difference to me, but I really wish you would come." It sounds to me like a person not used to asking for a favor, harking back all the way to his aloofness toward V when they were children, and even his distance from Clare when she was so obviously there for him. He really broke her heart. And finally, what does he want? Just to talk, to listen. Just to finally make personal human contact.
'Snake skins' make an unusually forceful image, but for what purpose I can't imagine. Except in a general sense to realize that he has had many lives, perhaps as you suggest done many things he is no longer satisfied with, and wants to finally be a plain ordinary self. The overall tone seems certainly of general dissatisfaction with his life as he has lived it, exactly as you suggest. It suggests to me a man reaching out for reality, 'prosaic' as opposed to the more elevated kind (aloof? literary? artistic? imaginative? distant?) he has been living. It is as if he is saying 'it is time to come home and rest.'
As a final thought, his life is fading at the same time that V's is growing more intense. With possible implication for the strange ultimate scene? A passing of the torch? But we'll get to that. Many harrowing moments still ahead for V.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

All of what you say is true Peder. I simply believe/feel/hope that it is directed at Clare, and not the treacheous Nina. I'd like to believe that Sebastian along with "shedding skins", shed Ninka and reached for the "real life" that he had so cavalierly and callously thrown away.

The change in mid letter could be simply the fact that he realized he had no right to intrude on Clare's new.....and from the outside......content life. So he switched it to V, someone that he had "shed" in the past as well.

 

[Peder]

All of what you say is true Peder. I simply believe/feel/hope that it is directed at Clare, and not the treacherous Nina. I'd like to believe that Sebastian along with "shedding skins", shed Ninka and reached for the "real life" that he had so cavalierly and callously thrown away.

The change in mid letter could be simply the fact that he realized he had no right to intrude on Clare's new.....and from the outside......content life. So he switched it to V, someone that he had "shed" in the past as well.

Pontalba,
It would be much preferred that he gained the wisdom to choose Clare over Ninka. Oh how I wish that too, now that you mention it. But......the letter was in Russian...... so I think he still had a forlorn hope for Nina, still lurking there until his senses got the better of him. But if so, still why no Clare? Beats me!
Somehow I'm beginning to believe that we will never be going to find VN writing a happy boy-meets-girl, marry-and-live-happily-ever-after novel. That disappoints me a little whenever I think of it. The relationships just never seem to click. And I would like a totally happy book once, just once.
Peder

 

[Peder]

The Torment of V

After V solves the mystery of Sebastian's last affair, the book shifts into high gear and drives straight toward its conclusion with a series of scenes that torment both V and the reader.
The torment of V begins with his complete exasperation at Nina, so great that he turns his back on her and stalks away.

That question which I had wished to ask Nina remained unuttered. I wished to ask her whether she ever realized that the wan-faced man whose presence she found so tedious, was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. What was the use of asking!

V goes on to describe for the reader The Doubtful Asphodel which has a simple theme: a man is dying. And VN and V go on to give full heaviness to those three ominous words. The six-page description of the Doubtful Asphodel is a mini-novella in itself, including "the author's way of expressing the physical process of dying: the steps leading into darkness."

Then V acquaints us with Sebastian's final year as he pieced it together, of a thin mournful and silent figure at loose ends.

Suddenly the letter arrives from his brother and that same evening V experiences a surreal nightmare, supreme in its psychological horror.
From the nightmare on there is an unrelenting series of events that can do nothing but twist his anxiety tighter about reaching his brother before he dies. The train trip and taxi ride are a nightmare inversion of VN's usual pleasant and glorious train trips through the country side. I ticked off the twists of the screw that tormented V throughout this trip to his brother's bedside, and counted 72 assaults on his composure in fourteen pages. Divided out, that's 5 per page, with some pages twice that.

Suddenly he is at his brother's room and the narrative reverses completely and immediately to reveries of calm and hopefulness -- 23 in two and half pages,or 10 per page. It is as if pale dawn and acceptance finally come to V after the storm-filled black tumultuous night.

I can't think of narrative with such unrelenting and growing intensity leading up to a final ending.

The individual scenes have to be reread and experienced individually: the dismissal of Nina, the Doubtful Asphodel, Sebastian's final year, the letter, the nightmare, the trip, the vigil, the release.
And then separately the final denoument of less than a page.

Spoiler endings:
Arthur's agony at the end of Enchanter did not last near as long.
Timofey Pnin drove off into the future.
Humbert could see immortality for his little girl.
Martin in Glory achieved his long desired self-fulfilment, I am certain.
But what about V?

Peder

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
But......the letter was in Russian...... so I think he still had a forlorn hope for Nina, still lurking there until his senses got the better of him.

Yeah, there is the language figuring into that equation.........
But maybe................
But doya think....................
Nah............................./sigh/
Suppose not.

 

[pontalba]

Nabokov seems to love to have the vixen/female/vampirish type of woman in his novels. The female lead in Laughter in the Dark actually IMO out does Ninka for downright badness, but Ninka is certainly high (or low) on that totem pole of Bad Girls. And of course Liza Pnin was horrible to poor Timofey.
I suppose that is overstating the case a bit. Neither Charlotte or the Mother in The Enchanter were horrible women, just naive and to different extents uncaring of their offspring.

I loved the way V tricked Nina/Ninka into revealing her Russian.

 

[Peder]

Yeah, there is the language figuring into that equation.........
But maybe................
But doya think....................
Nah............................./sigh/
Suppose not.

Well, Pontalba,
Viewed positively it may be that his love for Nina was of the same sort of all-consuming passion that Lionel Trilling described as being Humbert's love for Lolita -- assuming I vaguely remember something of the theme of that article by Trilling that Sitaram pointed us toward sometime back. The difference then becomes not one of difference in quality of the men's loves but differences in the young ladies who were the objects of their love. Humbert fell for an unachievable nymphet; Sebastian for a consuming 'elemental female' more in the manner of Lulu. So against that background, Clare didn't stand a chance -- unfortunately. And for that matter it might be argued that Martin's love for Sonia was of the same head-over-heels variety. So the men are all quite similar, but they play their lives out against different women, and all lose out in the end in various ways. Thinking about that further, add Timofey to the list of unfortunate totally-passionate lovers with Liza. All doomed.

But, like you, I could really wish for a happier ending. Just once, please, Mr. Nabokov.

Peder

 

[pontalba]

Nabokov seemed to mine his own life and extrapolate in the opposite direction of his own happy marriage. Granted he did have some pitfalls on the path, but he did overcome them, unlike his protagonists. At least in the ones I've read so far. The variations are amazing though.

I wonder what the sentence was that V almost heard in his dream. Was it what V finally decided was 'the secret'? Or the last line of the story.
I've just reread the receiving of the doctor's letter and the train ride and vigil.

 

[Peder]

I wonder what the sentence was that V almost heard in his dream. Was it what V finally decided was 'the secret'? Or the last line of the story.
I've just reread the receiving of the doctor's letter and the train ride and vigil.

Pontalba,
And are your nerves still jangling, or are you back to regular steady breathing after the bedside vigil?

The sentence? The unheard, almost heard, maybe heard, hafl-dream half-real sentence fragment? That one? You got me! But that provides a good reason for reareading those paragraphs.

And BTW I almost hate to say, but I have heard sentences like that.

Peder