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

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the hospital scene acquires of course a new, or
rather, an additional meaning.
So far the moments V spends sitting by the patient's
bedside have been interpreted as moments during which
he attains knowledge of his brother. They must now
also be seen as moments during which Sebastian comes
to know himself. V attains his knowledge when he
"becomes one" with Sebastian. Sebastian attains knowl-
edge of himself when he "becomes one" with himself.
Throughout his quest he has been split in two, as it
were: V, a subject, looking at Sebastian, an object,
a perfect paradigm of the "duality of subject and
object in the phenomenon of self-consciousness".
Self-knowledge comes at the moment at which this
dichotomy is overcome; at which Sebastian-as-subject
(V) no longer looks at Sebastian-as-object, but ex-
periences himself as one; experiences the "root of I"
in a mystical state of enlightenment and also ex-
periences himself as part of the "Oneness of every-
thing" in which "the root of 'I' is united to all
other 'I's. "72
His death can now no longer be seen as actual
physical death but is what Huxley calls "a dying to
self" :
The man who wishes to know the 'That' which
is 'thou' may set to work in three different
ways. He may begin by looking inwards into
his own particular 'thou', and by a process
of 'dying to self' - self in reasoning, self
in willing, self in feeling
- come at last
to a knowledge of the Self... 73
71