Bibliographic title
Taina Naita: Narrative Stance in Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Periodical or collection
Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas
Periodical issue
v. 6, no. 1
Page(s)
57-80
Publication year
Abstract
The paper discusses Vladimir Nabokov’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight as his first English experiment in constructing a model of a possible metaphysical contact between the world of human consciousness and a mysterious dimension beyond it. Nabokov's almost invariable principles of composition make the narrative stance of the novel open to various interpretations; the paper argues in favor of the version in which the title character’s secret (Russ. Taina Naita) is his calculated absence from the book of which he appears to be the biographical subject. The Appendix presents some results of archival study of the novel's extant manuscripts.
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