The real life of Sebastian Knight and the real life of Vladimir Nabokov

Sergei Kibalnik is a Soviet and Russian literary scholar. He specialises in the history of Russian literature of the 19th—20th centuries. He works as a leading research associate at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At his lecture, Sergei Kibalnik will present his new book titled Russian Authors’ Cryptography: From Pushkin to Nabokov (Petropolis Publishing House, St Petersburg, 2022).

Contrary to popular belief, Nabokov’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is closely connected to its author’s personal life. The autobiographical subtext of this work is the love affair experienced by the writer with Nina Guadagnini. In the novel, this could only be expressed cryptographically, as a kind of hidden message to Nabokov’s wife, Vera Slonim. A special part is played here by the chess symbolism of the novel, the meaning of which was denied by Nabokov himself. Authors should not be trusted all the way, however.