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

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surface, into the initial moral shock, and into the serious
emotions evoked by the sadness behind it all, there
enters also a feeling of profound uneasiness, even of
exasperation, sometimes exceeding the amusement, sometimes
giving way to it, but never taking over or dis-
appearing
altogether.
Humbert Humbert himself provides the word that best
characterizes his and Lolita's story and which explains
this phenomenon when he calls their journey across the
United States "our grotesque journey" (224). Most of
the comic scenes and descriptions of his memoir - parodistical,
or farcical, or absurd, or all at once -
also have a touch of the grotesque about them, and they
all add up to create an overall grotesque effect.
Briefly stated, the grotesque comes into existence
by "the unresolved clash of incompatibles in work and
response. "15 It may simply be "the co-presence of the
laughable and something which is incompatible with the
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laughable" in the subject matter that causes a twofold
reaction. In other cases something disgusting or hor-
rible or gruesome, or,
in
general terms: something
which is definitely not comic in itself, is presented
in a comic manner. In such cases disgust or horror are
evoked on the one hand, and on the other hand those
reactions which are incompatible with them, namely
amusement and laughter, and with them a feeling of indignation
or exasperation because the manner will be
felt to be wholly unsuitable to the matter.
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It
is
the essential characteristic of the grotesque that the
conflict between the incompatibles
should not be re-