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

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and has metaphysical dimensions. He detects in the
little girl he himself so often describes as vulgar
some quality which eludes man all the time though
he may yearn for it and struggle to reach it and
capture it: some "immaterial, pure, eternal, unchanging
beauty
...
"90 This for him is Lolita's real
essence, and this he wants to capture because he
feels that by grasping the beauty and perfection encased
in child-women man may transcend this world and
time and pass beyond "the mirror you break your
nose against. " 91
There are shades as to how fanciful or even fantastic
the individual artistic renderings of "true
reality" are. There are those in Pnin and Transparent
Things in which the elements of "average reality"
of which they are composed are clearly recognizable.
But there is also that in Pale Fire, where the artist
puts what he has perceived in purely fantastic shapes
which do not at the first sight seem to possess any
reality except that of fictitious events and characters.
The intimations of "true reality" that they contain
emerge only slowly and gradually.
Nabokov attaches a warning to this which is illustrated
most poignantly in Pale Fire, but also-: in
The Defence and Despair. The artist must remain aware
that his art is no more than a means of transcending
"average reality" and catching a glimpse of "true
reality", and that it does no more than render an
artistic image of it. Doing this, it gives him and
others knowledge that cannot be obtained in any other