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

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past with utmost precision and to discover in it
extraordinary outlines: namely, the development and
repetition of hidden themes in the midst of one's
overt destiny" is the autobiographical aim which he
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describes in Drugiye Berega. He specifies this when
he relates two curiously linked incidents in Speak,
Memory. When he was a little boy, a friend of the
family, General Kuropatkin, once came to his parents'
house and amused him by doing some tricks with a hand-
ful of matches. They were interrupted: the general
was rushed off to take command in Russia's war against
Japan. Fifteen years later Nabokov's father, fleeing
from "Bolshevik-held St. Petersburg" was asked for a
light by an old man in whom he presently recognized
this same old friend. Nabokov sees this second scene
as a sequel to the one at home and is fascinated by
the design: "The following of such thematic designs
through one's life should be, I think, the true purpose
of autobiography. "9
This method is transferred to the "translucing"
(32) of Hugh's life, and it yields surprising results.
The author finds in it a rather curious doubling of
names and shuttlecocks and old dogs, and some strange
resemblances, but these do not yield any hidden meaning.
They seem to be rather of the same insignificant
nature as the repetitions and doublings to which
Hermann in Despair attaches so much importance and
on which he bases his whole construction of a "new
life harmony". The author in Transparent Things finds
something more significant in Hugh Person's life,