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

-9-
and themes, scholarly procedures, and approaches to
literature, and, in particular, the way in which they
"mix" comedy and seriousness until these cannot be
disentangled, explains why Nabokov should have chosen
this particular word in connection with his works.
These are equally conspicuous for their deceptiveness
which is, in fact, one of Nabokov's avowed aims in
writing, and of which, incidentally, his use of the
very word which describes it, is a typical example.
He often dwells on the pleasure he experiences
in creating a work of art and the pleasure true art
is to give, and part of the pleasure of creation con-
sists precisely in producing something that rivals
nature in its deceptiveness. This he achieves by ap-
proaching the creation o. f a work of fiction somewhat
as he approaches the creation of a-. chess problem. Both
have in common that they present seemingly insur-
mountable difficulties to the inventor and the solver.
Deceit, to the point of diabolism, and
originality, verging upon tll grotesque,
were my notions of strategy
,
he says about his invention of chess problems, and
compares this directly to the composition of one of
those
novels
... where the author, in_a fit of lucid
madness, has set himself certain unique
rules that he observes, certain nightmare
obstacles that he surmounts, with
the zest of a deity building a live world
from the most unlikely ingredients -
rocks, and carbon, and blind throbbings.
43
These, then, are the difficulties of the composer
of problems, the artist, the writer of novels. The
difficulties of the solver of the problems, the reader