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

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ladybird on my leg, this cannot be
taken away, can it? ' (153)
The mind remaining unchanged during these seconds,
it can also become aware of its own being and nature.
It can look at itself, so to speak, and grasp its own
reality. This, again, is expressed perfectly in Van's
and Ada's love-making, for, created as ideal lovers,
as each other's mirror images, almost as twins (148),
they not only know each other completely at the mo-
ments of love, but, knowing each other, also attain
knowledge of their own minds and selves.
Bobbie Ann Mason, as was described above, contrasts
the experience of Marvell's gardener with Van's and
Ada's. Marvell's speaker, she says, seeks mystical
insight, he seeks God; Van is worshipping his own
image.
No`attempt shall be made to pin Van's and Ada's
experiences down as mystical experiences. It has
emerged, though, that what Van describes amounts. to
something more than Mason is prepared to see in it.
Van's and Ada's Ardis, like Marvell's garden, is "a
vision of bliss beyond the raging of physical
passion. " 81
Whatever one chooses to call their experiences,
in their very transiency they liberate Ada and Van
from "average reality". For a second or so they feel
"safe" (220), liberated, that is, from all the things
"average reality" is made of. They are liberated
from clock time, from the constant succession and
changes of things and events (possible only in time)
and the suffering these bring with them. They are