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

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France. He is tormented by regret because he feels
that he has missed his chance of establishing a close
relationship with Sebastian, and by fear of not
finding him alive. Much to his relief he is told on
his arrival at the hospital that his brother's state
has improved, and he is allowed to sit in the patient's
room for a minute. He listens to his breathing,
feeling closer to Sebastian than ever before, all other
feelings being "drowned... in the wave of love I felt
for the man who was sleeping beyond that half-opened
door" (190). What he learns too late is that there
has been a misunderstanding. The man is not Sebastian.
Sebastian is dead. V has listened to the breathing of
a complete
stranger.
So it looks a bit as if the comic tone were sus-
tained until the very end, and, rather tactlessly,
even in the face of death. Some person of Mr Goodman's
sensitivity might accuse Nabokov of the same vice that
this gentleman sees in Sebastian when he comments on
an incident that Sebastian describes in Lost Property:
Sebastian Knight was so enamoured of the
burlesque side of things and so incapable
of caring for their serious-core that he
managed,..., to make fun of intimate emotions,
rightly held sacred by the rest of
humanity (18-19).
But this would be an unjust accusation, for under the
burlesque surface the serious core, not only of this
scene, but of the whole book, is visible. V comments
on this incident:
So I did not see Sebastian after all, or
at. least I did not see him alive. But
those few minutes I spent listening to
what I thought was his breathing
changed