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

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thus opening the view into an abyss of uncertainty
in which the human mind might be helplessly and hope-
lessly lost if he did not in the very next sentence
advance the suggestion that there is a way out of the
dilemma:
One should bear in mind... that there
is no mirage without a vanishing point,
just as there is no lake without a
closed circle of reliable land (93).
Throughout the novel the author has proved that he
is aware of immense fields of reality which Hugh does
not perceive; that he knows not only the surface real-
ity of things, but all the layers behind it, and that
he can also see and understand the underlying design
of a man's life. He has also proved that he is able
to define the relation between dreams and reality. He
knows how dreams originate and what they are made of;
he can trace all the elements that go into them. He
can decipher the anagrams of dreams and twist the
anagrams back into the original words. He can determine
the exact boundaries between reality and dreams. And
he is so sure of his ground that he can determine,
and by means of a stylistic device pin down, the
precise moment at which Hugh's dream ceases to be a
mere dream and, at least for Hugh, becomes "reality";
this, he feels, is a triumph of art:
Person, this person, was on the imagined
brink of imagined bliss when Armande, 's
footfalls approached - striking out both
'imagined' in the proof's margin... This
is where the orgasm of art courses through
the whole spine with incomparably more
force than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical
panic (102).
As in other novels by Nabokov, The Real Life of