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

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ideas are established. The new words thus formed may,
at first sight, appear merely as senseless verbal hy-
brids with a slight comic touch because of the apparent
incongruity of the elements that form them; the sequences
of ideas may at first seem so haphazard as to
be taken for no more than totally absurd non-sequiturs,
comic on a superficial level.
The genuine and aimed at comic effect is attained
when the relations that actually do exist between the
individual elements become obvious; when it turns out
that the unusual words are not so much haphazard mix-
tures and distortions of normal words, but calculated
combinations of elements from different sources into
a new unit that contains a whole multitude of related
ideas; when, in a flash, the affinity of apparently
disconnected things and ideas becomes clear; when all
the implications of the complex statement are recog-
nized and taken in; and when the technical structure,
too, is seen through.
23
This "telescoping of form,... or of ideas,... or of
tone and implication"24 is a typical technique of wit.
It makes it possible to express in a short and con-
densed form what would otherwise ask for lengthy and
unwitty
explanations.
25
This same mechanism may, according to Freud, be
held responsible for the kind of dreams in which dif-
ferent persons or objects or ideas mix and merge into
one.
26
Again, it is not so much a distortion of real-
ity that takes place, but a concentration of various
individual elements into something new. The qualities