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

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Since nature was traditionally God's
book, the well-tended garden was an
avenue to ecstasy, a mysti9al eperi-
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ence of heavenly delights.
In a setting of repose, quietness and solitude,
...
the mind is free to indulge in
intellectual pleasures, the chief. one 73
being contemplation of one's own image.
Not, however, to stop at this, but to seek God "through
His manifestations in nature, and, ultimately, through
His manifestation in the greatest of creations, the
mind of man. "74
The spiritual and intellectual pleasures, Mason
says, are absent from Van's garden. Even though he
idealizes and exalts what he experiences through his
love for Ada and in their love-making "his spiritual
pleasure... is purely private and sexual/incestuous. "75
The incestuous act is also self-reflexive, but unlike
Marvell's gardener Van does not go beyond contemplation
of his own self. He does not "seek God", but "is caught
in a dead end of mirrors" and "is, in effect, wor-
shipping his own image. "76
If the interpretation offered earlier is acceptable,
then the love of Ada and Van appears in a different
light, and it also appears that Van has not misunder-
stood Marvell quite so thoroughly. Nabokov never com-
mits himself as to his religious views, nor do his
characters "seek God". What they seek to attain is an
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insight into reality; not what Kinbote, and with him
Nabokov, calls "average 'reality' perceived by the
communal eye"77, but "true reality"78. Some of them
achieve such insights, and with a few -V and Sebastian