Subject
Re: Editor's Notes on Sebastian Knight & William Caine's "The
Author of Trixie"
Author of Trixie"
From
Date
Body
EDNOTE. See end.
----
- Original Message -----
From: George Shimanovich
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: Editor's Notes on Sebastian Knight & William Caine's "The Author of Trixie"
I would like to complement the Editor on his observation regarding Russian readers - isn't it one of the reasons why Russian literature of the whole 19th century and part of 20th century became the marvel it is.
> (I am always bemused that the very idea of “a happy ending” is so alien to Russian readers that they use the English term “Hepi end” to describe it.)
In the light of the same posting: What Anglo-Persian Dictionary is doing on Sebastian's shelf?
- George
-------------------------------------------------
EDNOTE. An excellent question re the Dictionary. I too was wondering about it until I ran across an article by a Hungarian scholar: Pellerdi MАrta. Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian Knight or, What You Will. I quote:
There are other allusions around the mysterious person of Nina scattered in the text that are waiting to be picked up by the reader, deliberately planted by Nabokov, and together with the violets in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, they lead us to another train of associations. The function of the Anglo-Persian dictionary on Sebastian's shelf in his London flat is a detail that gains significance only when Nina tells V. that "there used to be a Persian princess like me. She blighted the Palace Gardens". (138) According to Nina "all flowers except pinks and daffodils withered if I touched them". (138) Her house, which she refers to as a "triste demeure", and gardens are unpleasant and melancholy and V. is surprised to learn that the dismal place had been built only thirty years before (137, 141). Another clue is dropped when V. goes to see a film Sebastian had seen three times, unusual, for it had been a "perfectly insipid" one called the "Enchanted Garden" where V. chances to recognise Nina among some bathers in one of the scenes. (155) V.'s antipathy towards Nina is heightened by the fact that she had smashed Sebastian's life and had never taken him seriously. Although she denies being a "femme fatale" that is exactly what she is, lethal, and Sebastian had withered at her touch just like the live creatures, plants did at Beatrice Rappacini's touch in the enchanted garden created by Nathaniel Hawthorne in Rappaccini's Daughter. Beatrice's attire and the flowers of her sister plant are of a purplish hue, and the whole story being based on an ancient one about "an Indian prince who sent a beautiful woman as a present to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath-richer than a garden of Persian roses...This lovely woman had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward until her whole nature was so imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence".(Hawthorne 202) Nina is the Russian incarnation of that princess, and if the country, culture or language she is associated with is considered, Sebastian's death or exile itself and all things beautiful like the garden that withered at her touch, take on a wealth of metaphorical meaning.