JM: You observed that V. is a "completely ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved one". Is he, indeed? In TRLSK V. writes: "Beware of the most honest broker. Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? repeats that voice in my conscience. Who indeed? ..."
J.A.: Oh I didn't mean that we should simply trust V., I just meant that the Character of V. and Kinbote were miles apart. I've never trusted V.'s views on Madame Lecerf--the way V. writes, it comes out as if he were saying that it was somehow philistine not to get with Sebastian romantically; not mention that his distinction between how he sees Sebastian's malaise, and Goodman does don't see that significant. The difference seems to be that for V. what's wrong with Sebastian is that he is so superior to the inferior beings around him (like Cincinattus?) while Goodman sees him as not being up to the challenges of the modern world, but to the same sadness and alienation in the character.
We can also read another sentence of his: the meek little man waiting for a train who helped three miserable travellers in three different ways? " In Pale Fire Nabokov warns the reader about "fairy-tales" ( CK's notes about the haunted barn): "There are always "three nights" in fairy tales, and in this sad fairy tale there was a
third one too."
What can we make out about the sentences above and this one,below?
"He is said to have been three times to see the same film — a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame Lecerf really was..."
There are moments when VN writes a definite "three" ( although not necessarily indicating "three nights"). Would this precise "three" indicate some kind of trite, tritheist trinity fairy-tale revelation? And did "V" in fact learn who Mme Lecerf "really" was?
J.A.: I never know what to make of these number things, actually. I remember that in an early chapter V. counts off five different things, but stops before putting in the the fifth. That reminded me of The Gift, which also makes use of Five Lists. You could also say that Sebastian's seeing the movie three times looks forward to Van's obssession with the film Don Juan's Last Fling, though Van watches it many more than three times; not to mention the name of the movie is similar to The Enchanted Hunters hotel in Lolita, and in that book Humbert and Lo travel around America seeing movies, seeing the same newsreels over and over again. As far as V learning who Madame Lecerf was, you're right that this
remains ambiguous, but I suspect Nabokov wanted us to feel he had. Certainly there's a lot of proof that Madame Lecerf and Nina Rechnoy are one and the same. Not just the admission that she kissed a man who could write his name upside down. Nearly every bit of description Paul Rechnoy gives about his ex-wife comes up during the course of V's interviews with Madame Lecerf. Paul Rechnoy says she's into nirvana, and Madame Lecerf says that her friend "may have special views about death that exclude hysterics"; Paul mentions that she was in one of her "illness phases" when she was at Blauberg where she supposedly met Sebastian, and at Lecerf's country home Madame Lecerf makes a show of looking for her pills; Paul Rechnoy says he married his wife when she was 20 in 1927 and Madame Lecerf mentions being 28 in 1936--there's at least one more thing but I've forgotten it. It's possible she's still the wrong woman, and that would not go against the
spirit of the book. Although if you wanted to be critical you could say that one flaw in the book, as in many books, is that the characters don't really ask what they would in life. For instance V would have called Madam Lecerf out about being a liar at the end and she at that point could have said who the heck she actually was. Only Nabokov's forcing the characters not to talk to each other directly allows things to remain unnecessarily mysterious. Another big one for me is when V. burns Sebastian's letters. Really? He doesn't even read the things? Sebastian didn't say he couldn't read them, just that he had to burn them, but then if he had even sneaked a peak at those letters the book's willful ambiguities would have been dispelled. Yet the book's so stylishly written and funny and fresh that the many moments of doubt about the character's actions that creep in every time I read the book don't
destroy it, but they do add I think a false tint to the cosmic speculation in it. On the other hand this does make you mistrust the narrator more.
BTW: I fully agree with your suggestion: "suggest something cosmic while simultaneously funning illusionism"...
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