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

-
57 -
imagination of Gretchen best; all the qualities that
make Mukhin look on him with contempt (55-56) acquire
a certain charm in gentle Vanya's view (94-95); and
the defeat he has just suffered is reason enough for
Smurov to invent an extremely idealistic and gallant
picture of himself (40-41), which can be trusted no
more than any of the others.
This has rather pessimistic implications as far as
the answer to the basic question is concerned. It
appears that anybody looking at another person will
be aware of only a few of that person's superficial
traits without being able to see the real person
behind them. And moreover, the little he is aware
of will be wholly subjective because what he sees will
depend on his own specific personality and character.
It is hard to guess at the real and natural stature
and the real looks of a person whom one sees distorted
by perspective in a mirror, and when there are a whole
number of distorted and fragmentary images, this
becomes even harder. Eventually it becomes impossible
even for Smurov himself to detect the real Smurov be-
hind the confusing variety of contrasting reflections:
even the possibility of self-knowledge is thus ruled
out in this novel. Being unable to do what he has set
out to do, namely "to dig up" the real Smurov, he
decides in the end that such a . -person
does not exist.
The only mode of existence, not only for him but for
anybody, he implies, is in the multiplicity of con-
trasting images formed by others. There is no such thing
as the model, or the real person, but only "phantoms"