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

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no more than the strange and grotesque creatures of
dreams: "spectres, werevolves, parodies" (36).
Cincinnatus' scale of values is thus diametrically
opposed to that of everybody else; it forms, in fact,
a sort of mirror image of it. It would seem logical
to complete this scale by assuming that death, to
others the affirmation of ultimate irreality, would
mean a return to ultimate reality to him.
Throughout the novel the reader sees the world
through Cincinnatus' mind, that is, the world appears
to him as it appears to Cincinnatus: as a world that
is not real. Cincinnatus sees it as a world of dream
fancies and nightmares, and he also sees it as an imi-
tation of his ideal reality, as a "clumsy copy" of it,
and to create this impression, the theatre lends it-
self as an analogy. Throughout, accordingly, the world
that holds him prisoner is created in terms of bad
dreams and nightmares, and in terms of a theatrical
production, or, to be more precise, in terms of low,
cheap comedy, sometimes degenerating into a bad circus
performance. All the time, both the dreams and the
"production" are at once comic and frightening,
illustrating throughout what was said at the beginning
about the use of comic devices in the novel.
Throughout the novel people keep changing and ex-
changing their identities the way they do in dreams.
k
The prison director changes into Rodion, the jailer,
adopting the latter's manner of speaking and growing
his beard while talking to the lawyer (IB, 35f. ).
"Pop's coming", says Emmie, the director''ýs little
.