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

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43
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-windows of various trains... and urges
Martin to attempt to cross the border
into 'Zoorland', as he romantically 139
calls 'the remote northern land' (162).
The lights become fatidic for him in the sense that
they urge him to undertake the dangerous adventure
from which he does not return.
Another such design in Martin's life is of course
that formed by the repeated image of the forest path.
Again this begins with a childhood memory: On the wall
above the bed of little Martin hangs "a watercolor
depicting a dense forest with a winding path disap-
pearing in its depths" (4), and in a book from which
his mother reads to him before he goes to sleep
there
...
was a story about just such a
picture with a path in the woods, right
above the bed of a little boy, who, one
fine night, just as he was, nightshirt
and all, went from his bed into the picture,
onto the path and disappeared into
the woods (4-5).
The child Martin wonders if his mother will not notice
the resemblance between the picture on the wall and
the story and, becoming alarmed, remove the picture
to "avert the nocturnal journey" (5).
The path, like the splendid lights, keep haunting
Martin's imagination, and later, when he has started
thinking of his enterprise, it is always connected
with the image of the winding path:
'And then I'll continue on foot, on foot',
muttered Martin excitedly -a forest, a
winding path - what huge trees! (157)
And this image, connected with his childhood and ac-
companying him throughout his youth, is also connected
with his end: Darwin, his Cambridge friend, informing