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

- 170
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Et puis, Dieu merci, nous avons la psychologie
du sujet, le freudisme folätre, la
description empätee de ce que le heros
pensait ä tel moment, - un assemblage de
mots quelconque pareil au fil de fer qui
retient les pauvres os d'un squelette, -
terrain vague de la litterature oü parmi
les chardons, traine un vieux meuble ev22-
tre que personne n'a jamais vu y venir.
This settles the matter. With Nabokov's ironic
statement in mind, one reluctantly has to accept the
fact that this passage must not be taken seriously,
and that V's account has imperceptibly again become
a parody of what he wants it to be.
So far, then, this particular method of research
has failed. It has not disclosed anything essential
about Sebastian. "... what actually did I know about
Sebastian? " V had to ask himself before he set out
on his quest (31). And he still has to admit what
he does not know and what he cannot do22
,
violating
one of the principles of biography which says that
the reader "must not be reminded that there is no
information about the principal figure. "23
V has many other shortcomings both as a biographer
and as a detective. He sometimes forgets the sources
of what little information he has and completely ig-
nores other sources offered to him: there is no in-
dication that he would have attempted to find out the
"somebody" who is also collecting data about Sebastian
Knight, had he not discovered by chance that this
somebody is Mr Goodman, whom he has already seen and
whom he dismisses as unqualified. He has taken an
instinctive dislike to him and is forever after unable
to 'ideal fairly with [his]
views which he does not