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

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We thought that he had in him a few
years of animal pleasure..., but
after all it was for him to decide,
for him to die, if he wished (99).
This is surprising in view of the fact that it might
reasonably be expected of an omniscient author that
he should have absolute power over his created char-
acters, that he could at any chosen moment influence
their actions, make them follow the course of action
that seemed best to him or make them avoid another
one, that he could, in short, manipulate and determine
their destinies. It seems unusual to allow them the
liberty that Hugh is seen to enjoy. The author denies
that he has the right to exert any such direct inter-
ference: this "does not enter our scope of activity"
(92).
Behind this stands another of Nabokov's convictions,
which concerns the third of the "three tenses". From
the first he makes it quite clear that he can only
be concerned with the past: "Transparent things, -
through which the past shines! " (1) Their past, shining
through the present, lies open to him, but he knows
nothing about their future. In fact he feels that the
word future is as much in need of quotation
marks as "reality" and "dream". Like Van Veen, in Ada,
he denies to the future any concrete reality: "The
future is but a figure of speech, a specter of thought"
(1).
i
This being so, it is impossible to make any predic-
tions about the future of a person's life and destiny.
It is neither "a chain of predeterminate links", nor