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

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doublings, anticipating the doublings of names and
shuttlecocks and old dogs in Hugh Person's life.
Hermann, however, takes the very doublings as clear
indications of the working of fate. In his mind they
do form a recognizable pattern into which his meeting
Felix (another doubling) fits perfectly. He considers
this meeting, too, as planned by fate _("chance", he says),
and planned so as to fit into the pattern exactly
as he has foreseen: he is convinced of his artistic
"gift of penetrating life's devices" (13) and thinks
he sees it co. nf irmed :
As in the case of inventive geniuses,
I was certainly helped by chance (my
meeting Felix), but that piece of luck
fitted exactly into the place I had
made for it... (132).
He regards not only his discovery of Felix and his
perception of their resemblance as a proof of his
ability to see through the workings of life and fate,
and of his creative power and art, but also the plan
he bases on it and even in fact his crime. He sees
them as the artistic completion of the pattern that
he thinks fate has started weaving for him, and he
also claims that crime is of the same nature as art
in yet another:
_Yespect:
it requires carefulness, pre-
cision and logic in its execution; the criminal act
is
... really but a link in the chain,
one detail, one line in the book, and
must be logically derived from all
previous matter; such being the nature
of every art. If the deed is planned
and performed correctly, then the force
of creative art is such, that were the
, criminal to give himself up on the very