''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses
''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses ''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses
II. The Defence Pale Fire Transparent Things Despair
- 210 - THEDEFENCE R. H. W. Dillard, discussing Nabokov's novels, discovers in them close affinities to Russian litera- ture. One of its characteristics is, he says, that its world is ... one in which a coincidence is a controlled event and in which the creative freedom of man is involved in the discovery of the pattern of his destiny rather than in forming the future himself out of a chaos of possibilities. In various ways a number of Nabokov's novels illustrate the points Dillard makes about Russian literature. The early novel The Defence, and two novels which Nabokov wrote when he had long begun to consider himself an American writer: Pale Fire and Transparent Things, seem to continue the Russian tradition. Nabokov makes the "discovery of the pattern" part of his quest for "true reality". People do not normally see more than the "average reality", or even only the "thin veneer of immediate reality", of their lives: what they see appears to them chaotic. The events and incidents of their lives do not seem to them to be in any way logically connected but seem to follow each other haphazardly and without any recognizable design or purpose. None of the novels quoted, however, leaves any doubt about the fact that "a coincidence a con- `is trolled event". Behind the seemingly chaotic surface and "average reality" another (true) reality is re- vealed. In it each event and incident can be seen to have its function and purpose, and in it even the
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- Page 175 and 176: - 169 - What were the things that r
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- Page 179 and 180: - 173 - seems to him too colourless
- Page 181 and 182: 175 - parody of what Stegner calls
- Page 183 and 184: - 177 - that lead to it, he is sing
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- Page 195 and 196: - 189 - he falls back on passages f
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- Page 199 and 200: - 193 - The passages betray not onl
- Page 201 and 202: - 195 - This "mental jerk" grants k
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- Page 209 and 210: - 203 - novels of Sebastian Knight,
- Page 211 and 212: - 205 - All those that knew Sebasti
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- Page 221 and 222: - 214 - Unlike Shade, however, Luzh
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- Page 225 and 226: - 218 - The sensitive reader dislik
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- Page 247 and 248: - 240 - following the road of its r
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- Page 257 and 258: - 250 - "really" Kinbote who has wr
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- Page 261 and 262: - 254 - Shade mentions a famous fil
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II. The Defence<br />
Pale<br />
Fire<br />
Transparent<br />
Things<br />
Despair