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

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was) I have gained some experience;
that when my night really comes I shall
not be totally unprepared. Problems of
identity have been, if not settled, at
least set. Artistic insights have been
granted. I was
allowed to take my palette
with me to very remote reaches of
dim and dubious being (239).
Vadim speaks about his experience in general terms,
but these point back to all of Nabokov's earlier novels.
They recall all their themes and sound rather like a
conscious recapitulation and summing-up on Nabokov's
part of what he has been concerned with and of what
problems he has solved during a long period of liter-
ary creativity. His novels, in fact, contain and fathom
Vadim's struggles and experiences.
The Eye, Pnin, Lolita, The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight all treat problems of identity, and The Real
Life of Sebastian Knight opens a way of solving them.
He has gained artistic insights into realms forbidden
to ordinary minds in The Defence, Pale Fire and Transparent
Things, where his art has shown him ways of
coming to an understanding of the puzzling and mysterious
underlying pattern of a human life and the
workings of fate. He has with Sebastian Knight, Van
Veen, Mr. R., and Cincinnatus C. struggled with the
problem of death and has found possibilities of defeating
that "madness". And he has, in Transparent
Things transcended the boundary between life and death
and has, with Mr. R., caught a glimpse
of
those
"re-
mote reaches of dim and dubious being", solving the
riddle that the dying man in Sebastian'Knight's
The Doubtful Asphodel seemed to be on the point of