セバスチャン・ナイトの真実の生涯 (講談社文芸文庫) [文庫]

1899年ロシアの名門貴族として生まれ、米国に亡命後「ロリータ」で世界的なセンセーションを巻き起こしたナボコフが初めて英語で書いた前衛的小説。早世した小説家で腹違いの兄セバスチャンの伝記を書くために、文学的探偵よろしく生前の兄を知る人々を尋ね歩くうちに、次々と意外な事実が明らかになる。

1899年ロシアの名門貴族として生まれ、米国に亡命後『ロリータ』で世界的なセンセーションを巻き起こしたナボコフが初めて英語で書いた前衛的小説。早世した小説家で腹違いの兄セバスチャンの伝記を書くために、文学的探偵よろしく生前の兄を知る人々を尋ね歩くうちに、次々と意外な事実が明らかになる。

"I am very happy that you liked that little book," wrote Vladimir Nabokov to Edmund Wilson in 1941. "As I think I told you, I wrote it five years ago, in Paris, on the implement called bidet as a writing desk--because we lived in one room and I had to use our small bathroom as a study." The book in question was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. And despite its humble origins, Nabokov's first novel in English showed him to be in absolute command of his adopted language.

Like many of the author's later triumphs, this one revolves around a question of identity. The late Sebastian Knight, we discover, was a transplanted Russian novelist whose taste for linguistic trickery bears a certain resemblance to Nabokov's. Now his half-brother is attempting to reconstruct the existence of this elusive figure. As he readily admits, the raw material isn't exactly the stuff of melodrama: "Sebastian's life, though far from being dull, lacked the terrific vigour of his literary style." But even the most mundane facts prove difficult for the narrator to nail down. He does, on the other hand, describe Sebastian's creative processes in exquisite and accurate detail:

His struggle with words was usually painful and this for two reasons. One was the common one with writers of his type: the bridging of the abyss lying between expression and thought; the maddening feeling that the right words, the only words are awaiting you on the opposite bank in the misty distance, and the shudderings of the still unclothed thought clamouring for them on this side of the abyss.

Sebastian's real life--or anybody's, for that matter--refuses to yield up a verbal equivalent. Still, the narrator manages a kind of fraternal fusion with his subject on the book's final page, which suggests a fluid and very Nabokovian view of identity itself. For this reason, and for the splendors of its prose, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a necessary read. It's also safe to say that it's the very best novel ever written on a bidet. --James Marcus
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Published in 1941 by New Directions. Very good condition with slight sunning to spine and edges of book. One of 1,500 copies, printed at the Walpole Printing Office, Mount Vernon, New York, in November 1941. Very scarce. Second state of binding--red cloth, printed paper spine/upper cover labels.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was born in St Petersburg. He wrote his first literary works in Russian, but rose to international prominence as a masterly prose stylist for the novels he composed in English, most famously, Lolita. Between 1923 and 1940 he published novels, short stories, plays, poems and translations in the Russian language and established himself as one of the most outstanding Russian migr writers. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。