Immortality of nostalgic souls in Vladimir Nabokov's the real life of Sebastian knight

Abstract EN

This study is basically concerned with the conceptualization of nostalgic souls in Vladimir Nabokov’s the real life of Sebastian knight (RLSK) as an exile novel.

in RLSK, Nabokov’s creative conceptualization of nostalgia was apparent in his attempts to reveal that nostalgic souls never die.

on one hand, in RLSK, Nabokov distinctively explores how non-Russians are nostalgic for Russia ; the place that once hosted them.

nostalgic non-Russians or the-wandering souls‖ who lost their host home could practice the same obsessive feeling of longing and belonging experienced by Russian exiles who lost their home.

Nabokov wrote that : -swiss women who had been governesses in Russia before the revolution… lived in their past...but when these poor wandering souls came home, they found themselves complete strangers … unknown Russia now took on the aspect of a lost paradise‖ (RLSK 18-19).

in this sense, nostalgic swiss women go under psychological tension because of their longing for a foreign home and their shaky belonging to their native home.

merging real with fictional, those people exist in their actual homeland, yet they nostalgically live in their virtual host-home, Russia.

such exiles resort to nostalgia to find a fictional home for their-wandering souls.

these wandering souls may suffer but virtually never die.

such a conclusion goes in line with Nabokov’s mystical vision that-nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die‖ (speak, memory 77).

similarity, the exiled Sebastian practices memorization to idealize and demonize Russia.

Sebastian bitterly declared, “I have not stopped loving you, but because I cannot go on kissing your dim dear face, we must part, we must part” (RLSK 56).

Sebastian may decide to part Russia physically, yet the expression of his longing “I have not stopped loving you‖ is an everlasting feeling.

the point to be stressed here is that an exile could exist physically in one place, but he virtually lives in another.

for v., he and his brother are physically two bodies, yet they may have a shared soul.

concerning such a case of full soul fusion, v.

admitted : -I may have seen and remembered what he saw and remembered‖ (RLSK 34).

to facilitate soul fusion, v.

exploited Sebastian’s statement : -I’m not dead… and this is my sabbath rest‖ (RLSK 90).

such saying may support the claim that Sebastian’s soul faints but never dies.