''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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he falls back on passages from Sebastian's works to
draw from them conclusions about their author's very
own and intimate emotions: Rejecting Goodman's theories
about Sebastian's attitude. towards Russia, he
contrasts it with his own, also based on a passage
from one of Sebastian's books (25-26). He uses this
method most spectacularly when he states that a letter
written by one of Sebastian's fictitious characters
may contain much "that may have been felt by Sebastian,
or even written by him, to Clare" (107). Clearly,
after all that has been said, his interpretation of
Sebastian's novels and his picture of his brother
might be just as false und subjective as Goodman's.
And yet his comments on his brother's works
sound much truer and seem, much rather than Goodman's,
to do justice to them, to point to their true meaning
and to what really concerned Sebastian. Instead of
the type formed by the outside world and able to react
to it only through a Byronic pose of melancholy and
loneliness, an individual thinker emerges from them,
whose mind has remained independent, and who has not
stopped treating what he is confronted with in his own
way. Something must have opened V's eyes to the truth
of Sebastian's books and must have enabled him to see
what Mr Goodman does not see, and to understand what
Mr Goodman cannot understand. The solution must lie
in V's statement that "I am Sebastian".
Susan Fromberg, commenting on this passage says
somewhat enigmatically: "Sebastian is working
48
through his brother", and then explains what she