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

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again and turns his despair into triumphant delight.
It not only arranges for Lolita to have to return
for at least some time, it also does what Humbert
himself cannot do. It stages an accident, artistically
combining all the elements that lead up to it: "hurrying
housewife, slippery pavement, a pest of a dog,
steep grade, big car, baboon at its wheel", and adding
to these Humbert's own contribution, namely his journal
which produced "vindictive anger and hot shame"
and "blinded Charlotte in her dash to the mailbox"
(102). So perfectly are they all mixed, and so perfectly
timed, that Charlotte is "messily but instantly
and permanently eliminated", just as Humbert has somewhat
tastelessly but accurately imagined in one of
his daydreams (53). Although talking about a fatal
accident which is in itself certainly not comic, Humbert
mentions so many details that appear comic (or
become so in his description), both in the scene of
the accident and in his reactions to it all, that the
gruesome and the comic are in the end perfectly balanced.
He mentions such incongruous details as the
silly dog walking about from group to group "and back
to the car which he had finally run to earth"; the
father of the driver of the car, "to the anatomical
right of the car", "whom the nurse had just watered
on the green bank where he lay -a banker banker so
to speak" (97). Side by side with the comic details
there is the shocking sight of Charlotte Haze, "the
top of her head a porridge of bone, brains, bronze
hair and blood" (even here he has time for alliter-