RLSK: a query
Chapter One, first line: "Sebastian Knight was born on the thirty-first of
December 1899."
Chapter Nineteen: (the penultimate) "I have managed to reconstruct more or less the last
year of Sebastian's life: 1935. He died in the very beginning of 1936, and as I
look at this figure I cannot help thinking that there is an occult resemblance
between a man and the date of his death. Sebastian Knight d. 1936.... This date
to me seems the reflection of that name in a pool of rippling water. There is
something about the curves of the last three numerals that recalls the sinuous
outlines of Sebastian's
personality."
Sebastian was born at the turn of the XXth Century and he died at the
start of 1936. Nabokov confessed his confusion with birthdates, subtracting one
year in his counting, because he was born in 1899.*.
While I was perusing several paragraphs from RLSK I noticed that
there are two chapters that have a curiously similar beginning and they
are related to dates of
death.
Would this similarity be intentional and what does it
mean?
Chapter 4:
"Two months had elapsed after Sebastian's death when
this book was started."
Chapter 8: "Two years had elapsed after my mother's death before
I saw Sebastian again."
..............................................................................................
* - He died in 1977 (doubled numbers
again).Nabokov d.
1977.