The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is the first English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written from late 1938 to early 1939 in Paris and first published in 1941. A work centred on language and its inability to convey any satisfactory definition, it has been identified as a forerunner of the postmodernist novel.
Nabokov's first major work in English was written hastily in Paris while the author sat in the bathroom, his valise set across a bidet as a writing desk. [1] It had been preceded by nine earlier novels in Russian, written under the pen name V. Sirin, and shares with them a preoccupation with the problems of living in exile and of adaptation. This, Nabokov's first novel under his own name, was published by New Directions Publishers in 1941 and sold slowly. After the success of Lolita it was republished in 1959, this time to wide critical acclaim. [2]
The narrator, V., is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography of his half-brother, the Russian-born English novelist Sebastian Knight (1899–1936). In the course of his quest he tracks down Sebastian's contemporaries at Cambridge and interviews other friends and acquaintances. In the course of his work V. also surveys Sebastian's books (see below) and attempts to refute the views of the "misleading" The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, a biography by Knight's former secretary Mr. Goodman, who 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 embittered by a love affair with another woman — a Russian whom he presumably met at a hotel in Blauberg, where Sebastian spent time recuperating from a heart ailment in June 1929. V. leaves for Blauberg, where, with the help of a private detective, he acquires a list of the names of four women who were staying at the hotel at the same time as Sebastian and tracks down each to interview them. After dismissing the possibility of Helene Grinstein in Berlin, 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 cannot 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 von Graun will be staying with her. Finding that Helene has not yet arrived, V. mentions to Nina a letter introducing himself to Mme von Graun, which angers her. By chance, V. learns that it is Nina Lecerf herself, and not Helene, who was Sebastian's final romance. Nina was, in fact, the Mme de Rechnoy whom 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 the 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 letter from Sebastian asking V. to visit him at a hospital outside Paris. As V. makes the trip (from Marseilles, where he is temporarily stationed by his firm), his ties to his own life become increasingly visible for their tenuousness: his employer hampers 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 another 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 his incarnation.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a biographical metafiction which is in some ways an anticipation of postmodernism. [3] Although there are elements of the detective story in its description of a quest to ascertain facts about a very private and evasive novelist, its subject cannot be grasped through the medium of language, even though Sebastian Knight is only knowable through his own medium. Instead, the book spins “a texture of words around an empty point, an absence”, according to Giorgio Manganelli. By the end of the second chapter it has become clear, anyway, that the projected book will not be about Knight's life but his brother V's attempt to write it. [4]
What complicates the process of getting to know the real Sebastian Knight is the interlayering of a subjective account of the quest with a variety of texts. There is firstly the hastily written and poorly researched biography by Mr Goodman, Knight's ignominiously dismissed secretary, largely written to fit a simplistic thesis. Then there is Knight's own “memoir”, supported by passages from his novels, both as stylistic demonstrations and illustrative of V's subjective reading of their biographical significance. [5] Finally there are V's own novelistic interpolations, making clear the difference between Knight's linguistic mastery and the literary devices used by hack authors. “Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight?” asks a sudden voice in the Cambridge mist at the end of chapter 5, only to be disavowed immediately. In a similar way, V prepares a speech to unmask the deception of Madame Lecerf at the end of chapter 17 but then refrains. “She will be sent a copy of this book and will understand.”
Such tricks continue the perception in Nabokov's earlier novel Despair that “the first person is as fictitious as all the rest”. [6] It is also open to the reader to play the detective himself, noting in what ways the novel reflects Nabokov's own biography. He too was a Russian émigré who was educated at Cambridge, his relationship with his brother Sergei was always at arm's length, and an unwise emotional entanglement had just endangered his domestic arrangements. [7]
The narrator discusses the following (fictitious) works by Knight:
Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. Nabokov wrote Pale Fire in 1960–61, after the success of Lolita had made him financially independent, allowing him to retire from teaching and return to Europe. Nabokov began writing the novel in Nice and completed it in Montreux, Switzerland.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
Pnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States launched Nabokov's career into literary prominence. Its eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born assistant professor in his 50s living in the United States, whose character is believed to be based partially on the life of both Nabokov's colleague Marc Szeftel as well as on Nabokov himself. Exiled by the Russian Revolution and what he calls the "Hitler war", Pnin teaches Russian at the fictional Waindell College, loosely inspired by Cornell University and Wellesley College—places where Nabokov himself taught.
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.
The Gift is Vladimir Nabokov's final Russian novel, and is considered to be his farewell to the world he was leaving behind. Nabokov wrote it between 1935 and 1937 while living in Berlin, and it was published in serial form under his pen name, Vladimir Sirin.
Brian David Boyd is a professor of literature known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on literature and evolution. He is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Mary is the debut novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first published under the pen name V. Sirin in 1926 by Russian-language publisher "Slovo".
Speak, Memory is a memoir by writer Vladimir Nabokov. The book includes individual essays published between 1936 and 1951 to create the first edition in 1951. Nabokov's revised and extended edition appeared in 1966.
Invitation to a Beheading is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian from 1935 to 1936 as a serial in Sovremennye zapiski, a Russian émigré magazine. In 1938, the work was published in Paris, with an English translation following in 1959. The novel was translated into English by Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, under the author's supervision.
The Defense is the third novel written by Vladimir Nabokov after he had immigrated to Berlin. It was first published in Russian 1930 and later in English in 1964.
Look at the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977.
King, Queen, Knave is the second novel written by Vladimir Nabokov while living in Berlin and sojourning at resorts in the Baltic. Written in the years 1927–8, it was published as Король, дама, валет in Russian in October 1928 and then translated into German by Siegfried von Vegesack as König, Dame, Bube: ein Spiel mit dem Schicksal. Forty years later the novel was translated into English by Nabokov's son Dmitri, with significant changes made by the author. A film adaptation only loosely based on the novel followed in 1972.
"Spring in Fialta" is a short story written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1936, originally as Весна в Фиальте in Russian, during his exile in Berlin. The English translation was performed by Nabokov and Peter Pertzov. Spring in Fialta is included in Nine Stories and Nabokov's Dozen.
"Bachmann" is a short story written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov under his pen name, Vladimir Sirin, in Berlin in 1924. The story details a three-year love affair between the titular Bachmann, a celebrated pianist, and Mme. Perov, a married woman.
This is a list of works by writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov that addresses the controversial subject of hebephilia. The protagonist is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He describes his obsession with a 12-year-old "nymphet", Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish diminutive for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.
At the Villa Rose is a 1910 detective novel by the British writer A. E. W. Mason, the first to feature his character Inspector Hanaud. The story became Mason's most successful novel of his lifetime. It was adapted by him as a stage play in 1920, and was used as the basis for four film adaptions between 1920 and 1940.
Aris Fioretos is a Swedish writer, translator and scholar of Greek and Austrian extraction who writes in Swedish, German and English. Aside from his own literary career, he is also Professor of Aesthetics at Södertörn University and a member of both the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and the Akademie der Künste.
"That in Aleppo Once..." is a short story written by Russian-born author Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977). First published in Atlantic Monthly in 1943, the story takes epistolary form, with an unnamed narrator describing his recollections of himself and his wife's deteriorating relationship while fleeing German occupation during Case Anton. The narrator reveals to his correspondent the likelihood his wife was not real, examining this premise during the account of events.
Sergey Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian poet and pedagogue. He died in a Nazi concentration camp located in Neuengamme. He was brother to Vladimir Nabokov.
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