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

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other time. It is thus that he can re-combine the
elements into new patterns, and that he can "transform"
and re-create -the world. He does not invent these in-
terrelations and patterns, nor does he shape them
through an arbitrary act of. selection. They are there,
hidden from the ordinary mind behind the surface
appearance of things, and it is for-: the artist to
uncover them in his work of art.
Memory plays an important part in this, because
stored in it the artist finds the elements that he
may use in the process of re-creation, and, moreover,
he finds them stored in such a way that the inter-
relations and patterns just described are clearly
visible. Some "mysterious foresight" seems to be at
work (again not an act of arbitrary selection) when
memory stores those elements which will uncover the
pattern and pushes those into the background that
would confuse it or blur it.
I would say that imagination is a form
of memory... An image depends on the
power of association, and association
is supplied and prompted by memory. When
we speak of a vivid individual recollection
we are paying a compliment not to our
capacity of retention but to Mnerosyne's
mysterious foresight in. having stored up
this or that element which creative imagination
may-use when combining it-with
later recollections and inventions. 88
What we find in a work of art, then, maybe elements
from factual f"average") reality, but they do not
reproduce this reality as we know it. They are taken
out of their contexts, shaped, re-combined, combined
with elements from completely different contexts, or
transformed into artistic shapes, so that they form