THE DOUBTFUL ASPHODEL

This is the title of Sebastian Knight’s last novel about a man who is dying. The closer he approaches his death, the stronger the premonition becomes that a revelation is awaiting him and that the mystery of his own life and that of the universe will be disclosed. The author, who is monitoring the dying man closely, expects to witness the revelation and to partake somehow in the disclosure. But when the moment finally

arrives “the author seems to pause for a minute, as if he were ponder-ing whether it were wise to let the truth out” (178). That “minute of doubt was fatal: the man is dead . . . and we do not know.” What then follows in V.’s retelling is puzzling: “The asphodel on the other shore is as doubtful as ever.” If the asphodel on the other shore is the dead man, why then should he doubt, having regained universal knowledge (or, if not, having acquired the certainty that the revelation does not occur)?

An asphodel is a flower that belongs to the lily family. The name of a daffodil is a corruption of “asphodel” through its variant name of “affo-dil” (Concise Oxford Dictionary 64). The daffodil, or Narcissus pseud-onarcissus, refers to the myth of Narcissus, who “heartlessly rejected lovers” and fell in love with the reflection of his own face in a pool, and “tried to kiss the beautiful boy who confronted him” (Graves 1:

287). Likewise Roy Carswell painted Sebastian’s eyes and face “in such a manner that they are mirrored Narcissus-like in clear water” (117). This suggests that the asphodel on the other shore, separated by reflecting water, can be still one’s mirror image. Does Sebastian Knight suggests that life after death might be a sort of continuation of earthly life?

The asphodel is also in another sense a significant flower in Greek mythology: when people die their ghosts are ferried across the river Styx by Charon, and they arrive on the Asphodel Fields, from whence they can proceed to hellish Tartarus or the heavenly orchards of Elysium (Graves 1: 120–121). Robert Graves writes that the Homeric adjective asphodelos “probably means ‘in the valley of that which is not reduced to ashes’ . . . namely the hero’s ghost after his body has been burned” (1:

123). This suggests that V.’s description of the “asphodel on the other shore” represents the soul of the man who has just died.

It is understandable that the author, having missed the precious moment of the revelation’s manifestation, is condemned to doubt its existence. But why should this doom, this existential doubt, befall our souls as “the asphodel on the other shore is as doubtful as ever”? Is this doubt also part of a life that begins when earthly life stops?

4. V.’S QUEST

V.’s vigil at the bedside of the dying man (whom he thinks is Sebastian) forms a setting similar to that of the main episode in The Doubtful Asphodel. The close proximity is emphasized in both cases: the author

of The Doubtful Asphodel is aware of all the movements of the dying man as when he “seems to move an arm or turn his head” (174). The

“minute of doubt” that was “fatal” coincides with the slackening of the author’s proximity; “He seems to lift his head and to leave the dying man” (178). In the St. Damier hospital the nearness of V. to the dying man is obvious as the latter’s breathing is clearly audible since its minor irregularities are reported many times. Like the author of The Doubtful Asphodel, V.’s thoughts wander toward “some momentous truth [Sebastian] would impart to me” and his expectations seem well grounded as he is “learning something every instant” (200–201).

It seems as if it is not because of doubts that V.’s expectations might be threatened, but because the dying man is not Sebastian; the warmth of love V. radiated to the man whose breathing he could hear so well, went to a mere stranger.

This situation, however, is very similar as the one described by John Shade in “Pale Fire.” He too had expectations based on the recurrence of a supernatural phenomenon. In Shade’s case it is not the broaching of an absolute truth, but a kind of evidence for the existence of the hereaf-ter. Alas, the recurrence appears to be based on a misprint, a mistaken spelling, just as the doorman of the St. Damier hospital misspells the name of Knight. But instead of ruining Shade’s expectations, the mis-print provides the very clue to the affirmation Shade has been searching for his whole life, as I have argued in “‘Mountain, not Fountain’: Pale Fire’s Saving Grace.”

In the same manner the fact that Mr. Kegan and not Sebastian occupied the bed next to V. redeems his quest, instead of destroying it.

It is thanks to this that V. has “learned one secret too” which changed his life “as completely as it would have been changed had Sebastian spoken to me before dying.” What V. has learned is that “any soul may be yours if you find and follows its undulations” (202).

If this notion is inspired by V.’s reading of The Doubtful Asphodel than this transmigration of souls can be understood: if death means the instant and complete solutions of all the mysteries of the universe, then the differences between spirits cease to exist. One becomes an amorphous ghost without some inalienable individual intelligence.

This means, to quote Leona Toker, that “the individual identity moves . . . toward a dissolution in something infinitely greater than itself”

(Mystery of Literary Structures 7). But is an afterlife, where no “who is

who” can be imagined, preferable above plain nothingness? “The need for maintaining a hold on one’s identity and not letting it dissolve in the magma of the collective flow is among Nabokov’s pervasive concerns,”

writes Toker (“Mixers” 94).

“The problem of the balance between the universal and the unique,” as Toker calls it, is clearly noticeable in Pale Fire (Mystery 15).

John Shade will “turn down eternity” if he can not retain in the afterlife everything which has been dear to him in his earthly life, while Kinbote is not in the least impressed by “the experience gathered in the course of corporeal confinement” and rejoices that he will ultimately deliquesce in a “Universal Mind” (“Pale Fire” l. 525; Pale Fire 227).

Shade’s greatest wish is that he and his wife will be reunited with their deceased daughter Hazel. Mutatis mutandis, V. has the same wish with regard to Sebastian. There is however one great difference. Shade has loved his daughter all his life most intensely. V. has seen Sebastian hardly ever after his mother’s death: two short meetings in Paris which ended abruptly. Invitations by Sebastian to come to London were turned down. “Why had I kept away from him so stubbornly,” V. asks himself (193). And by writing Sebastian’s biography V. wishes to learn of Sebastian what he has missed when he was alive.

V. must have realized that his many efforts (notably those to find Nina) did little to bring him closer to Sebastian. Sitting at the bedside of the man whose breathing he heeded so anxiously, he felt a deep attach-ment to the dying man. Having been told that it was not Sebastian but a Mr. Kegan whose presence filled him with so much compassion, he might have realized that “any soul may be yours.” And, still more important, if it is so well imaginable that one can understand the soul of a mere stranger, then it is most likely that Sebastian’s soul will be far more approachable.

And this knowledge might be what V. has won with his quest:

although he fails to find the real person Sebastian has been, his belated love for his half-brother invigorates his belief that he ultimately will be on affectionate and intimate terms with Sebastian.