De Vries, Gerard Silent Love: The Annotation and Interpretation of Nabokov's ‘The Real Life of Sebastian Knight’ (review)

Abstract

SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 344 come to figure,’ she writes, ‘as a central dimension of a common European heritage, the defining feature of European civilization’ (p. 14). Her focus on personal documents allows Bulgakov to speak in his own voice. The result of this approach is an evocative book that offers a more rounded picture of his life to the reader, elucidating the often difficult circumstances surrounding his creative decisions under the Stalinist regime. The monograph consists of five chapters, which provide a chronological outline of Bulgakov’s life and a contextualization of his works. Chapter one introduces Bulgakov’s family background, which had influenced the poetics of The White Guard, details his transition from medicine to literature, and the eventual move from Kiev to Moscow. Chapter two is dedicated to Bulgakov’s journalistic career during the NEP years, the fate of his novella, The Heart of a Dog, whose typescript was confiscated by the OGPU together with his diaries, and addresses the dramatization of The White Guard for the Moscow Art Theatre. Chapters three and four focus on the fate of Bulgakov’s plays (and in most cases, their eventual ban by the Repertory Committee). Chapter five touches on Bulgakov’s work for the Bol´shoi Theatre, explores his celebrated novel,TheMasterandMargarita,andturnstoBatum,acontroversialplayabout young Stalin which, Curtis notes, has none of the inventiveness characteristic of his other dramatic works. The epilogue reflects on Bulgakov’s legacy in the light of the fascination drawn on him by Stalin in his later career. This brief and amply illustrated biography is lucidly written, eminently readable and will no doubt prove to be an excellent teaching tool. A welcome addition to the literature on Bulgakov, it is a stimulating read both for his lifelong admirers and for those who are new to his writing. UCL SSEES O. G. Voronina de Vries, Gerard. Silent Love: The Annotation and Interpretation of Nabokov’s ‘The Real Life of Sebastian Knight’. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2016. ix + 221 pp. Works cited. Index. $79.00. Gerard de Vries’s Silent Love is the first annotated study of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel written in English. This comprehensive analysis offers a very close reading of the text that proves to be particularly revealing in terms of Nabokov’s method. Nabokov notoriously wrote most of his novels on 3” x 5” index cards, which he would shuffle to organize the order of his narratives (see, for instance, his interview for the Paris Review, 1967). In the Knopf edition of his last, unfinished novel, The Original of Laura (New York, 2009), all 138 index cards are faithfully reproduced, offering readers a rare glimpse of Nabokov’s creative process, which was based on a REVIEWS 345 range of themes and motifs, sometimes noted down in the form of a single word. In Silent Love, de Vries considers these details as the primary source for an accurate interpretation of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. ‘In order to explore the referential wealth of the novel,’ writes de Vries, ‘my main aim was to annotate the text in a way that does most justice to the wide erudition and compositional craft invested in it’ (p. 6). After giving essential background information on the genesis of the novel (‘Introduction’, pp. 1–7), in the second and longest chapter of the book (‘Annotations’, pp. 8–75), de Vries illuminates its extraordinary complexity. His insightful comments unveil the scope of the novel’s references and allusions, which include colours, objects, literary themes, as well as historical and literary figures such as Blok, Khlebnikov, Pushkin, Proust, Shakespeare, Yeats, and many others. Yet, according to the author, ‘[w]hat makes a work by Nabokov so very intriguing is not only the affluent erudition hidden in references and allusions, but perhaps even more the way in which these are woven into many complex motifs, all interlaced and dovetailed’ (p. 6). Hence, de Vries categorizes these motifs ‘according to the overarching themes of the novel’ (p. 7), which constitute the three core chapters of his study: 1) narrative strategies (ch. 3, pp. 76–108); 2) problems of identity (ch. 4, pp...