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

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exhausted. Kinbote uses it from the beginning. It
replaces knowledge and serves to cover up his lack
of information. It is also purely subjective. It is
not deduced from facts, which might give it a shade
of probability, but springs from his imagination, is
an echo of his own constant preoccupations, and is
coloured by his prejudices and preferences respectively.
His attachment to certain themes, his dislike
of Sybil Shade, and his fond illusions about his relation
to the poet are clearly the sources of his
thoughts about some drafts preserved by Shade (15-16).
There are some very comic moments at which his speculations
turn into sheer absurdity, as when the
glimpse he catches of the poet's slippered foot
(which is all he can see of him when spying on him
from his own window) inspires him to draw bold conclusions
about the poet's state of mind at that moment
(23). In an "orgy of spying" (87), even using
binoculars (88), he later draws even wilder conclusions
from what he sees. Quite apart from resorting
to a very odd and unorthodox method of research (an
expression of all editors' desire to find out about
their authors, normally, however, kept within proper
bounds), he yields to yet another temptation (also
quite common in the profession), namely to attach
too much importance to trivial details and to see
some deep and significant meaning where there is no
meaning at all.
It is clear that with all this Nabokov is making
fun of what he is ostensibly imitating. Even while