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

Abstract
Nabokov once said that "reality" is "one of the
few words which mean nothing without quotes. "
He has often expressed his scepticism as to whether
it is ever possible to know a thing: all one can
do is to collect as many facts and data about a
thing as possible, accumulate information about it
and thus try to get nearer its reality. But even
though one may know a lot about an object, one can
never know everything about it: "It's hopeless",
Nabokov says and concludes, "... we live surrounded
by more or less ghostly objects. "
What applies to things applies in an even higher
degree to persons. More often than not the complexities
of their souls and characters escape us
and we see not real persons, but "phantoms": images
of people that are the products of out own minds
and that are shaped by our own interests and expectations.
Nabokov's questioning enters the provinces of
metaphysics when he inquires into the nature of
space and time, when he asks whether life may not
be an illusion, a dream; whether life is just a
succession of meaningless coincidences, or whether
it has some sensible and meaningful pattern. Finally
he inquires into the nature of death and poses the
question whether death is indeed the end of everything.