''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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144
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behind the comic texture of its surface, with one
aspect of man's search for what Nabokov calls "true
reality". Humbert's admiration and passion for nymphets
has been said to be "_a metaphysical as well as a phys-
ical
compulsion.,,
78
To understand this, it is useful
to remember that "nympholepsy" is defined as
A state of rapture supposed to be inspired
in men by nymphs, hence, an ecstasy or
frenzy, esp. that caused by desire of the
unattainable,
and "nympholept" as
One who is inspired by a vý? lent enthusiasm,
esp. for the unattainable.
Two passages from Laughter in the Dark and Lolita
respectively express that this is the state both
Albinus and Humbert Humbert suffer from. Albinus
has dreamt of hundreds of girls, but has never got
to know them. He feels that
...
they had just slid past him, leaving for
a day or two that hopeless sense of loss
which makes beauty what it is: a distant
lone tree against golden heavens; ripples
of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a
thing quite impossible to capture (LD, 10).
Humbert, too, feels that there is something which it
is impossible to capture, something which man may
yearn for and struggle to reach, and which eludes
him all the same. But. like Albinus he feels that
some of that elusive quality is caught and encased
in child-women. He feels that by grasping their
beauty and perfection man may transcend this world
and time, pass beyond "the mirror you break your
nose against" (L, 220), and be admitted into Wonderland;
be taken as near the unattainable as it will ever