The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
"The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov that explores themes of identity, memory, and the complexities of biographical interpretation. The story revolves around V., who seeks to write a biography of his deceased half-brother, the enigmatic novelist Sebastian Knight. V. aims to honor Sebastian's legacy, which he believes has been tarnished by a rival biographer, Mr. Goodman, whose work he considers superficial and misleading. As V. delves into the lives and works of Sebastian, he unravels a tapestry of personal connections and artistic insights, revealing the intricacies of Sebastian's narrative style and literary techniques.
Throughout his quest, V. faces challenges in his research, leading him to confront his own feelings of rivalry and inadequacy. The novel blurs the lines between biography and fiction, inviting readers to question the nature of truth and the subjective experience of the self. The relationship between the brothers becomes a focal point, culminating in a profound realization about love and the fluidity of identity. Ultimately, Nabokov's work serves as an exploration of the elusive nature of understanding another person's life and the role of imagination in the act of storytelling. This intricate narrative structure invites readers to reflect on the boundaries of reality and fiction, making it a rich subject for literary analysis and interpretation.
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
First published: 1941
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Parody
Time of plot: Early twentieth century
Locale: Russia, England, and France
Principal characters
V. , the narrator of the story and the biographer of Sebastian KnightSebastian Knight , V.’s half brother
The Story:
V. wants to write a biography of his deceased half brother, Sebastian Knight. Writing the book is V.’s act of homage, or commemoration, for Sebastian, whom he believes to be an unjustly forgotten novelist. V. has a rival, a Mr. Goodman, who had previously written a biography of Sebastian. V. objects to Goodman’s book on the grounds that it is false, insensitive, and full of clichés in its portrayal of Sebastian and his unique genius.
The true reason for V.’s disgust with Goodman’s biography, however, slowly emerges: jealousy. Goodman beat V. in writing the biography, and in the process, Goodman experienced what V. never had: four years of close contact with Sebastian. Goodman’s book is commercially successful, and some of Sebastian’s manuscripts had been left with him—which results in a lawsuit.
When V.’s attempts to gather information from several of Sebastian’s friends and acquaintances prove unsuccessful, he, like Goodman, turns to Sebastian’s novels for information. For his first novel, as a protest against the conventionality of second-rate authors, Sebastian wrote a parody of a detective novel titled The Prismatic Bezel. The secret of Sebastian’s success with this novel is his use of formal innovation, and V. assimilates some of his half brother’s techniques in his own biography. The heroes of Sebastian’s detective novel are called “methods of composition” because Sebastian sought to convey a way of seeing a personality rather than the essence of a personality.
In his examination of Sebastian’s next book, Success, V. notes that Sebastian elevates chance and coincidence into mystical, significant forces. The most significant element in Success, however, is the conjuror, who figures prominently in the work. This character makes an appearance in V.’s life in the form of a Mr. Silbermann, whom V. meets on a train. In V.’s search for a mysterious woman whom Sebastian had pursued just before he died, V. needs to obtain a list of the women who had stayed at the resort hotel that Sebastian visited the summer he met the woman. Silbermann expresses his sorrow for Sebastian’s death, and he agrees to help V.; he produces the list, but he advises V. that the pursuit of the woman is pointless.
The rest of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight consists of a series of hints and guesses about various identities and suggestions about possibilities that the reader might entertain: that V. will successfully find his way through the maze of clues that obscure the identity of the woman Sebastian loved; that Sebastian’s spirit will assist his half brother by easing V. into the evanescent world of a novelist’s imaginings; and that V.’s obsession with his half brother will lead him into a nightmare world in which his goal recedes even as he seems to be drawing nearer. Another possibility is that the whole book could be a fictitious biography invented by Sebastian himself and populated by characters from all of his novels.
The main point of this exercise in the attempted re-creation of another’s life later becomes clear. At the point at which Sebastian’s last novel ends, V. says that he feels as if he and his half brother are on the brink of some absolute truth—that Sebastian knew the “real truth” about death, and he was going to reveal it. The conclusion of Sebastian’s novel anticipates the conclusion of V.’s biography; Sebastian announces that he has been granted a great truth. He had discovered the arbitrariness of the personality, and he conceived the book as the means by which this arbitrariness could best be conveyed. In Nabokov’s novel, this moment of revelation is anticipated by a mock death scene in which V. rushes to the bedside of his dying half brother and listens from an adjoining room to the rhythm of Sebastian’s breathing. The truth his brother is about to impart suddenly vanishes, and all that remains is the simpler truth, the human emotion of the love V. feels for him.
This profound rush of emotion turns out to be a ploy designed to trick those who, like V., are prone to sentimentality. When he leaves the room, V. learns that he has in fact, been visiting someone else and that Sebastian had died the night before. Life played another joke on V.
V. then announces that he himself is Sebastian Knight, and Nabokov’s novel concludes with a vision of all the characters from Sebastian’s life around him on a lighted stage. He is impersonating his half brother, and his act of sympathetic identification reaches a type of completion. These are not the closing remarks of the real Sebastian, who had all the while been pretending to be a nonexistent person. What V. does in the process of researching his biography is shape his own understanding of his subject; he locates that understanding on the edge of the ineffable. Unable to discover the contiguous, linear, horizontal narrative he seeks, he tells the story of his frustration, and in doing so creates the circular, vertical account that ends, not by announcing a truth, but by imparting an imaginative one.
Bibliography
Alexandrov, Vladimir E. Nabokov’s Otherworld. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. Dismantles the widespread critical view that Nabokov is first and foremost a metaliterary writer. Suggests, instead, that an aesthetic rooted in his intuition of a transcendent realm is the basis of his art.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990-1991. An essential biography, not only for its examination of Nabokov’s life but also for its discussion of his life’s relation to his art.
Connolly, Julian W. The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Collection of essays offering a concise introduction to Nabokov’s life and writings. Some essays discuss Nabokov as a storyteller, a Russian writer, a modernist, and a poet, while others analyze the major Russian novels and Nabokov’s transition to writing in English.
De la Durantaye, Leland. Style Is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. De la Durantaye focuses on Lolita, but also looks at some of Nabokov’s other works, such as The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, to discuss the ethics of art in Nabokov’s fiction. He maintains that although some readers find Nabokov to be cruel, his works contain a moral message—albeit one that is skillfully hidden in his texts.
Grayson, Jane, Arnold B. McMillin, and Priscilla Meyer, eds. Nabokov’s World: The Shape of Nabokov’s World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Nabokov’s World: Reading Nabokov. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. A two-volume collection of essays written by an international group of Nabokov scholars. Includes discussions of intertextuality in Nabokov’s works, the literary reception of his writings, and analyses of individual books. The second volume includes Priscilla Meyer’s essay on The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
Hyde, G. M. Vladimir Nabokov: America’s Russian Novelist. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1977. Discusses Nabokov’s novels as parodies of realism and parodies of themselves. Argues that the novels reveal the author’s continuity with classic Russian literature, while also reevaluating that tradition.
Maddox, Lucy. Nabokov’s Novels in English. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983. A thorough investigation of narrative structure, characterization, and theme in Nabokov’s novels.
Rampton, David. Vladimir Nabokov. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. An insightful analysis of Nabokov’s fiction. Discusses formal innovation, as well as theme and characterization. Includes a bibliography of primary and secondary works.
Roth, Phyllis A., comp. Critical Essays on Vladimir Nabokov. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984. An excellent collection of essays on the play of language in Nabokov’s works. Discusses the relationship between Nabokov’s life and art. Includes an annotated bibliography.
Wood, Michael. The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. Wood’s close reading of Nabokov’s texts shows the power and beauty of Nabokov’s language and the subtlety of his art and uncovers the ethical and moral foundation of his work. Chapter 2 focuses on The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.