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

- 310-
next morning, none would believe him,
the invention of art containing far
more intrinsical truth than life's
reality (132).
But all the qualities that make a piece of art and
give it its "intrinsical truth" are absent from what
he claims to be his masterpiece. In fact, he abuses
art, and it may be for that just as much as for his
crime, that Nabokov condemns him to everlastung hell-
fire.
19
What is most seriously wrong with Hermann's creation
is of course the fact that it has no basis and no
equivalent in reality. Ardalion, unpleasant though he
may appear (but then, of course, we get only Hermann's
partial view of him) has the more artistic insights
of the two. He knows that there are no exact copies
in reality: "Every face is unique" (50) and also that
art does not consist in copying things. He transforms
reality in his pictures, however doubtful his "modern
style" may appear to Hermann who cannot discover
"the ghost of a likeness" (66) in the portrait Ardalion
has painted of him.
Unlike Ardalion, "Hermann wants actual copies, not
the connection made by art"20, and he insists on im-
posing his will on reality which does not provide
what he wants. As Ardalion has said: "Every face is
unique", and it is clear from the beginning that Felix
who, Hermann insists, is "a creature bodily identical
with me" (23) is so unlike him that everybody, in-
cluding Felix himself, fails to notice any resemblance
at all. There are instances of Hermann himself almost
doubting what he so strongly insists on at other times.