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

-
156 -
of an insight into the real life of one Sebastian
Knight gives rise to scepticism and doubt.
Human beings and their minds are individual and
separate entities and there seems to be no way of
anyone acquiring complete and real knowledge of any-
body
else.
On the physical level we all feel the intense
solitariness of individuality. There are you,
and here am I. You can never know what it is
like to be me, nor can I ever know what it is
like to be you. As though to emphasize this,
or at least symbolising it, our bodies are
all discr I te and well-defined entities separate
in space.
On the level of the mind a certain amount of communi-
cation is of course possible, but it looks as if in
the last analysis there existed the same solitariness
there as on the physical level, with each person having
his own and individual thoughts and dreams and memories
and fantasies which are accessible to him alone, which
he can exhibit and about which he can give information,
but which he cannot transfer to another person.
3 The
validity of verbal communication itself must be doubted
for the simple reason that different people attach
different meanings to words4, especially, one might
say, where mental experiences are concerned. And even
if one assumed for a moment that two persons completely
shared, for example, their memories, "there would
still be at least the possibility of different reac-
5`
tions to the experience. "
A. J. Ayer suggests a method which, he implies, may
in certain cases help to bridge the gap between two
persons and grant at least a momentary and fragmen-
tary understanding. "I can conceive of having any