"The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" by Vladimir Nabokov, summary Automatic translate

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight was written in 1938-1939 and published in 1941. At the time of its writing, Nabokov lived in Paris. According to legend, the book was written while sitting on the toilet, and the board over the bidet served as Nabokov’s desk. It was Nabokov’s first book written in English, and he took it with him to New York.

Although the book found a publisher (it was originally published by New Directions Publishing Corp.), it was not an instant success. A review in The New York Times was scathing about the novel and about Nabokov as a writer. It wasn’t until the release of Lolita, which received widespread acclaim, that the novel was rethought and received widespread acclaim.

The novel can be described as a fictional biography of a fictional author, Sebastian Knight. (Most critics dismiss the notion that Sebastian Knight refers to the real author, which Nabokov sometimes hinted at.) The novel "performs", so to speak, its own theme, given that Knight was the author of "exploratory novels".

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is itself an exploratory novel - an exploration of the personality and life of the title character. Thus, Nabokov mixes fact and fiction by writing a carefully researched "biography" of a fictional character. He layers themes and genres, creating a kind of prism that reflects different light depending on how you look at it: look at a book as a mysterious storyteller, and this is a biography; look at it like Nabokov, and it’s an exploratory novel about exploratory novels. Even the book’s basic concept opens up a world of mysteries, games, and identities that Nabokov explores within.

The romantic thread gives the novel a narrative "backbone": in the course of his investigation into the life of Sebastian V. focuses on love relationships with two completely different women. The reason for Sebastian’s love and the strangeness of his refusal become a mystery that the narrator seeks to unravel. Meanwhile, on another level, the novel shows the obsessive connection of the obscure V. (whose very name, a single cryptic initial, reveals the extent of his obscurity) with the life and concerns of his famous half-brother.

Despite the fact that it is deeply woven into the text, V. hides himself quite successfully. However, some facts concerning our narrator are becoming known. V. is a small businessman who works in Marseille for a company based in Paris and lives as a Russian émigré. All his friends are Russians, and he learned English only through careful study for business purposes. Although V. offers us only these meager facts, and although he carefully controls his statements about feelings for his brother throughout the novel, shades of anger, jealousy, possessiveness and rejection show through the cracks on the surface. The very authorship of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight becomes a game of martial arts—or, to use Nabokov’s favorite set of images, chess. An unknown brother is taking over Sebastian’s territory as a novelist,

As The Real Life of Sebastian Knight began to be reviewed and discussed, many critics took note that, as a first novel, this book had a remarkably consistent style and purpose. Nabokov’s signature traits - mixing fact and fiction, playing with literary and non-literary genres, obsessing over the intricate relationship between narrator and object - are already clearly present. Moreover, Nabokov is already enjoying his love of puzzles, patterns, and strategy games: numbers (like the number 36) and images (like violets) take on an arcane meaning. Author, narrator and reader are equally attentive (or at least should be attentive) to such self-conscious literary tricks, to the structural and symbolic levels of meaning in the novel, as well as to the human drama of family and love.

As a last word, it’s funny (if it’s not particularly good literary scholarship) to see the extent to which Nabokov predicts his own career in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Like Knight’s first novel, this book was widely publicized upon publication, but was republished years later following the success of Lolita. Like Knight (and W.), Nabokov was a hybrid of Russian and English influences, working and winning in a language that was not his native language (although he had spoken English since infancy). Nabokov, like any other writer, was absurdly aware of himself, how his works would be read by the masses and enjoyed by the few. And he brings that light and sardonic self-awareness to every page of this, his first novel.

Plot

The book begins with the fact that V. hesitates, as throughout the novel, between memories of Sebastian Knight and an analysis of Sebastian’s works. He immediately introduces some biographical facts - his relationship with Sebastian (they are half-brothers on his father), the death of Sebastian’s parents (father killed in a duel, mother dies, leaving the family, from heart disease) - and literary criticism - a caustic review of Sebastian’s previous biography written by one Mr. Goodman, Sebastian’s former secretary.

V. is obviously difficult to start a book; he tries several approaches, interviewing Sebastian’s former governess, his Cambridge friends, and delving into his own memory. Every beginning leads to nothing. We learn a few amusing anecdotes about Sebastian—for example, an oriental journey with a futurist poet and his wife—but nothing meaningful. When he calms down, V. returns to his favorite target, Mr. Goodman, whom he attacks as a greedy, parasitic ignoramus with clown historical-philosophical methods. We catch a glimpse of Sebastian in Cambridge. It turned out that he adores England and is tormented by the fact that he will never be able to pass for a real Englishman. Later in Cambridge he began to write in earnest, which turned him inward and largely removed him from society.

While researching his half-brother’s background, V visits Mr. Goodman (before he even knew of Goodman’s background) and is rebuffed. There he meets Helen Pratt, a friend of Claire Bishop’s (an old friend of Sebastian’s), who offers to help him with his research. They later meet and Ms. Pratt tells V. everything she knows about Sebastian while assuring V. that he should not date Claire Bishop. V tries anyway, but gives up when he sees that Claire is pregnant. He later learns that she had a miscarriage and died in childbirth.

V. intersperses his own memories of Sebastian with his research. He talks about meeting Claire and Sebastian in Paris - he found them very happily in love. V. continues their story, saying that Sebastian developed the same heart disease as his mother, and that Claire acted as a kind of nurse, and also printed his books while Sebastian dictated them.

This leads V. to a detailed discussion of Sebastian’s novels. He treats them in chronological order, beginning with the taunting murder story, "The Prismatic Headband," and then the idiosyncratic love story, "Success." V. also represents P.G. Sheldon, a poet who knew Sebastian well during this period. Through Sheldon, we learn about the rift between Claire and Sebastian; Claire and he had different attitudes towards success. In the end, Sebastian leaves without Claire for Blauberg, where he meets another woman (although we will find out about this later). Their relationship with Claire goes wrong. Meanwhile, Sebastian hires Mr. Goodman to handle his cases while he works on new projects.

V., obsessed with this "other woman" in Blauberg (who he found out to be Russian), travels to Blauberg and tries to get her identity from the hotel manager, but he refuses. Later, V. meets a former detective, Mr. Zilberman, who agrees to help solve the mystery. Silbermann allows V. to reduce the circle of possible "other women" to four. V. visits them in turn, starting with a woman in Berlin who reminds him of his mother and therefore, as he believes, could not disturb Sebastian’s happy home.

In Paris, he is looking for three others, starting with Madame de Reshnoy. From the woman’s husband, he learns that she is an unlikely candidate for an affair, although his first wife, a woman named Nina, fits perfectly. V. ignores Nina for the time being and moves on to Madame von Graun, who is away. Instead, he is talking to her friend, Madame Leckerf. Lekerf lures V. and invites him to meet von Graun at her country house. V. is sure that von Graun is the femme fatale, and he is pursuing this opportunity, but due to a linguistic mistake (Lekerf speaks Russian!) He discovers that Lekerf has been leading him all this time. In fact, she is Nina, and Sebastian did have an affair with her.

Once the mystery is solved, it turns out to be rather unimportant - and indeed, it seems to show more of V’s obsession than anything about Sebastian. V. proceeds to discuss Sebastian’s latest novel, a book about death and dying, and remarks that the book was written based on Sebastian’s own experience with death. V claims that this is his favorite Sebastian book, a statement that invites us to think that V enjoys the thought of Sebastian’s death.

Then V. tells about the last act of his brother’s life. He talks about receiving a letter from Sebastian asking him to visit him in Paris. Postponed by business, V. is finally forced to visit Paris when Sebastian’s doctor sends an urgent telegram. V. recounts a hellish journey fraught with every conceivable delay before he finally arrives at Sebastian’s hospital. He bribes a nurse to allow him to approach Sebastian’s deathbed, but then learns that the dying patient is not Sebastian at all - Sebastian has already died. Unperturbed, V feels a cathartic bond with his half-brother and decides that he "became" Sebastian Knight because he understood Sebastian’s soul. So he proceeds to write the "biography" (or is it a confession? or is it something completely different?) that we have just finished reading.

List of characters

Sebastian Knight

Author of the novel: A well-known writer famous for his "exploratory novels" that explore in detail the life and meaning of a character (Needless to say, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is an exploration novel about an exploration novel). Many of his fictional characters play a role in his "biography", as do many of his real-life relationships.

Olga Olegovna Orlova

A woman whose neat diary—every day she writes down the weather for the day—allows V to describe the weather on Sebastian Knight’s birthday.

Virginia Knight

Mother of Sebastian Knight.

Edward Knight

Sebastian Knight’s maternal grandfather, a wealthy gentleman.

Palchin

The man who lived with Virginia Knight after she left her husband; he killed Sebastian’s father in a duel.

Captain Belov

Friend of Sebastian Knight’s father, his second in the duel with Palchin.

Mr. Goodman

He was briefly Sebastian Knight’s personal secretary, writing a biography of his life shortly after his early death.

Mademoiselle

The unnamed Swiss governess of Sebastian and his half-brother.

Alexis Pan

A futurist poet who befriends Sebastian.

Larisa Pann

Alexis Pan’s wife, also Sebastian’s girlfriend.

Mr H

A character created by Sebastian but never used in the novel.

Gorget

Sebastian’s acquaintance from Cambridge.

Mr. Jefferson

Sebastian’s tutor at Cambridge.

Helen Pratt

Sebastian’s friend.

Claire Bishop

Longtime girlfriend of Sebastian.

v.

Presumably the first initial of the narrator, Sebastian Knight’s half-brother; the only reference to it.

Mr. Bishop

Claire Bishop’s husband, coincidentally sharing the same last name.

G. Abeson

The protagonist of Sebastian Knight’s first novel, The Prismatic Bezel.

Percival Q.

A character in Sebastian Knight’s novel Success.

Ann

The love interest of the protagonist of the novel "Success".

Willy

Another character in the novel "Success".

P.G. Sheldon

Friend of Sebastian and Claire.

Mr Siller

The protagonist of the novel The Other Side of the Moon.

Dr. Oates

The heart specialist who took care of Sebastian.

Roy Carswell

The man who painted the portrait of Sebastian Knight.

Silbermann

A French businessman who Sebastian’s brother meets on the train and asks for advice.

Helen Greenstein

A woman who stayed at the same hotel as Sebastian in Blauberg.

Natasha Rozanova

Childhood friend of Sebastian Knight.

Paul Ralich River

Husband of Madame de River.

Madame de River

A woman who shared a hotel with Sebastian in Blauberg.

Varvara Mitrofanna

The second wife of Pavel Palych.

Nina Torovets

The first wife of Pavel Palych, who stayed at the same hotel as Sebastian in Blauberg when her marriage broke up and disappeared shortly thereafter.

Helene von Graun

A woman who stayed at the same hotel as Sebastian in Blauberg.

Madame Leckerf

Madame von Graun’s friend.

Lydia Bohemian

A woman who stayed at the same hotel as Sebastian in Blauberg.

Doctor Starov

The doctor who treated the narrator’s mother and then treated Sebastian.

Dr. Guinet

Chief Physician of Saint-Damier Hospital.

Monsieur Kegan

The man mistaken for Sebastian at the Saint-Damier hospital.

Topics

Fiction and reality

In The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Nabokov blurs the lines between reality and fiction. Although the novel takes place in an identical physical reality, Nabokov uses fictional coincidences and even intrusions of fictional characters to blend the world of the narrator and the world of Sebastian Knight’s novels.

A good example of Nabokov’s use of this technique is the doubling of Knight’s fictional character, Mr. Siller, and the character who meets and helps V. on the train, Mr. Silberman. Identical in description and action, Mr. Silbermann seems to have been invented straight from Knight’s story, but V. does not show it. A more subtle example is how Helen Greenstein directs the narrator towards the Rozanovs, thereby allowing him to meet Sebastian’s first love. In general, there are many coincidences in the novel that would make even Dickens blush.

However, unlike Dickens, Nabokov uses these coincidences for thematic rather than plot purposes. There are several reasons why Nabokov uses this technique. First, he mimics the blending of Sebastian Knight’s real and imagined experiences to create fiction. This is a reminder that fiction is based on reality; it is not just a figment of our imagination. That is why fiction makes sense - it is inextricably linked to our daily lives. Secondly, this technique corresponds to the narrator’s view of the world.

W. Sebastian’s understanding, his study of his life, constantly fluctuates between his books and his "real" relationships, and there are almost no differences between them. Thus, the reader’s own distinctions become confusing, as it becomes difficult to determine what exactly in the book is the product of reality and what is fiction.

Shapes of love

Romantic love plays a dominant role in the text, both in terms of plot and in terms of characterization. First, Sebastian’s father’s love for Sebastian’s mother, even after she abandoned and disgraced him, eventually leads to his death. Although the narrator dismisses the father’s obsession with honor, it seems clear that it was love and jealousy, perhaps as well as honor, that motivated their father. This act will affect Sebastian’s later feelings and behavior, and V. himself notes that Sebastian has become obsessed with the manner and cause of his father’s death.

During the course of the novel, Sebastian falls in love twice (if you count Natasha Rozanova - three times), but none of these passions can be called romantic love. Sebastian clearly loved Claire, but in many ways they are more like close friends than lovers. While Sebastian says they are "kind of married", it’s not clear if they ever lived together. His passion for Nina Rechnaya is in many ways similar to his father’s passion for his mother. And yet, there seems to be too much hate in their relationship to qualify as romantic love.

V becomes obsessed with finding the woman who wrote to Sebastian in Russian because he believes he will find the love of Sebastian’s life, his great romantic love. He is devastated by the discovery of Nina Rechnaya, because, having found her, he realizes how devastated Sebastian’s life really was.

A family

The idea of ​​a family is one of the essential factors that encourages V. to tell her story. His hatred of Mr. Goodman may be more due to Mr. Goodman not recognizing V. and his mother as part of Sebastian’s family than any erroneous claims about Sebastian’s early life or life. Throughout the novel, V. tries to prove that he and Sebastian are a family in several ways. First, he tries to show that their story makes them a family, but at the same time he understands that this is a story of separation and a protracted departure. He also tries to infiltrate Sebastian’s life by meeting all the people Sebastian was close to and in doing so "establishing his authority". Finally, V tries to prove that he understands Sebastian better than anyone else because they were brothers.

Oddly enough, proof that he and his mother were Sebastian’s only family is scattered throughout the text. He writes to them, briefly but constantly. He comes to his stepmother’s funeral and encourages the narrator to live next to him, even with him. He supports V. as long as he needs money, and maintains contact, constant if not intimate. Finally, and most importantly, when he dies, he calls V., his brother, and no one else.

Thus, if V is so desperate to prove that he and Sebastian were related, it may only be because he, and not Sebastian, doubts the importance of this relationship. V.’s sense of family was severely undermined when his father left them for a woman who had nothing to do with the narrator. Whatever his motives for writing this book, at least one of them must be a desire to regain the sense of worth and importance that the narrator lost with his father.

Honour

Honor is often mentioned as a motivation for people’s actions in this novel. However, it often seems that honor is just a plausible disguise for disguised human emotions. When Sebastian’s father challenges Palchin to a duel for the reputation of his ex-wife, it’s just a farce. She abandoned him and their child, and all the reputation she once had is long gone. Here, honor seems to take the place of love and jealousy, and also suggests that Sebastian’s father just never came to terms with the loss of his first wife.

Similarly, V. claims that he is writing this book to protect his brother’s honor from Mr. Goodman’s errors and omissions. And yet one cannot help but wonder whose intrusion Sebastian would have outraged more? It is quite possible that he would have found Mr. Goodman’s account of his life extremely amusing. V.’s open discussion of his family history, his love affairs, and his slow fall to death seems far more offensive than Mr. Goodman’s pedantic and overzealous analysis.

If the book has anything to say about honor, it is perhaps only that noble deeds never call themselves noble, and noble people see no need to hide behind a title. There are few examples of noble behavior in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight - when V burns Sebastian’s love letters or when he refrains from approaching Claire Bishop on the street - but when they happen, they go unnoticed.

Investigation

Sebastian Knight wrote what V. calls "research" novels. The characters are investigated, and what is discovered resonates both within the plot and beyond. One of his novels was written under the guise of a detective story, the other under the guise of a romance novel. However, each of them was actually about different purposes and methods of investigation, which treated the investigation as a necessary part of life.

Now V. writes a research novel, disguised as a biography. Exploring his brother, he writes his life. At the end of the book, it seems to him that he has found the soul of his brother, and he imagines himself on stage, surrounded by the characters of Sebastian’s life (both real and fictional), himself in Sebastian’s place. When he says that “the soul is just a way of being, and not a permanent state, that any soul can become yours if you find and follow its waves,” what V. discovered is the secret of writing. One type of exploration is the imaginary exploration of a writer who follows and possesses countless souls. Like Sebastian, V. discovered this secret. But he does not understand that one investigation never leads to the truth, but is only a variation of it. He could go many ways besides which he chose. The character now "infused" by the narrator is not Sebastian, but simply a Sebastian of his own invention, born from the fruits of his "investigation".

masks

Masks play an intricate and at the same time obviously important role in the novel. First, masks are used metaphorically to represent the idea of ​​disguise or deception. V. puts on a mask for his readers. He hides his true feelings and motives, perhaps even from himself. He tries to play the role of Sebastian’s devoted brother, not only to explain his actions to the reader, but also to get the information he needs.

However, not all masks are worn for such unseemly reasons. When Sebastian goes to Cambridge, he tries to create a mask of impeccable behavior for himself. But he is constantly convinced that his mask is too obvious, and every time he puts it on, he only draws attention to himself.

When V comes to see Mr. Goodman, Mr. Goodman literally puts on a mask. V. acts as if this is normal behavior and requires no explanation, even when Mr. Goodman gives him the mask as he leaves. This scene stands out in the novel for its absurdity, and no clear, realistic explanation emerges. However, it can be seen as a literal reminder, perhaps to the inattentive reader, that whether the mask is obvious or not, we all wear it from time to time, and there really is nothing to worry about.

Glory

Fame is a delicate topic throughout the book. Most often, it is treated old-fashioned, without making a distinction between "glory" and "shame". V. notes that Sebastian was completely unmoved by the meager notice of his first book. When the second book brought him a literal "success", he acted as if he wanted it to pass. It is difficult to say whether Sebastian’s attitude towards "fame" is a consequence of his character or situation. It is obvious that Sebastian’s health is deteriorating as his professional life improves. His intentional focus on work may simply be the result of realizing that he has a very limited amount of time in which to create something meaningful.

Sebastian’s feelings are contrasted first with Claire’s and then with the narrator’s. Claire wants Sebastian to exalt his honors, associate with other writers and critics, and generally enjoy what he has earned. Again, it’s hard to understand Claire’s motives, although it can be assumed that they are selfless. Does Claire understand that Sebastian won’t live long, and therefore strives to ensure that he enjoys life to the fullest while he can? Or does she deny his condition and want to pretend that he has all the time in the world to work with?

In contrast, V seems to be very proud of his brother’s success, but he also suggests that his brother "enjoys" his success. When he reads the announcement of Sebastian’s latest book, he imagines his brother surrounded by adoring fans and jealous of his brother’s success more than ever. Even as he writes about this scene, fully aware that Sebastian will die shortly after this memory of him, the narrator does not correct his impression of his brother. Moreover, one of the reasons he is so annoyed by Mr. Goodman’s work is that while the works of Sebastian Knight are being read, someone will continue to read the works of Mr. Goodman.

Ultimately, Nabokov seems to suggest that fame is something one enjoys only for the sake of others. Sebastian could not care about fame, because it seemed to him an empty consolation in connection with the approaching death. Only Claire and the narrator could take comfort in the fact that if Sebastian was destined to die, then at least he had the recognition, the recognition he deserved, while he lived.