Here's a kind of confirmation from RLSK:"As often was the way with Sebastian Knight he used parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion. J. L. Coleman has called it 'al clown developing wings, an angel mimicking a tumbler pigeon', and the metaphor seems to me very apt. Based cunningly on a parody of certain tricks of the literary trade, The Prismatic Bezel soars skyward. With something akin to fanatical hate Sebastian Knight was ever hunting out the things which had once been fresh and bright but which were now worn to a thread, dead things among living ones; dead things shamming life, painted and repainted, continuing to be accepted by lazy minds serenely unaware of the fraud. The decayed idea might be in itself quite innocent and it may be argued that there is not much sin in continually exploiting this or that thoroughly worn subject or style if it still pleases and amuses."
I wonder if ghostly interventions are a part of the same scheme. The additions to "love at first sight" (a worn sentence) to the lines in Lolita represent the kind of "ghostly revival" as intended in the preceding novel and attributed to S.Knight, or following the beautiful demonstration of "Nabokov's art of counterpoint" brought up by Didier Machu. *
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* - Didier
Machu ..."In connection with "love at ever and ever sight" I just wish
to add that Charlotte, falling on her knees, acknowledges Humbert as “her ruler
and her god” (Vintage 91 / Penguin 102): “forever and ever” (68 / 75), says the
letter she writes after praying the Lord and asking Him for advice re
Humbert--while the latter availed himself of her being at church to say his own
mute prayer ("Let her stay, let her stay . . .") and prevent "any act of God"
(59 / 65) that would remove the golden load from his lap (a nice example of
Nabokov's art of the counterpoint).
[EDNOTE. I also
thought that "ever and ever" might echo the end of the Lord's Prayer, as recited
in various Christian denominations: "forever and ever." --
SES]