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

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He cannot form his future "out of the chaos of
possibilities. "
Shade experiences the same sensation of harmony
and of pleasure that first comes to Luzhin when he
sees through the combination that forms the pattern
of his fate. And, unlike Luzhin, Shade can accept
what life brings him, for beyond experiencing aes-
thetic and artistic pleasure, he finds comfort in
the hope evoked in him by the thought of some intel-
ligent and purposeful plan behind the seeming chaos.
It is art that grants Shade his insights. Logical
questioning and reasoning have not taken him very
far: only as far as having some vague notion that
all does not depend on coincidence. His art and his
imagination have done for him what his reason and
intellect could not do, and in this, again, Shade
is as one with Nabokov:
Whatever the mind grasps, it does so
with the assistance of creative fancy,
that drop of water on a glass slide
which gives distinctness and relief to
the observed organism.
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