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

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seems to him too colourless, he tries to fill with
life what seems to him "dead". He provides dialogues
between Clare and Sebastian which no one probably
has overheard and reported to him, and sets them in
imaginary backgrounds. He provides details of their
life together which, apart from being no more than
the products of his imagination, are so commonplace
as to verge on the comic and certainly form a comic
contrast to his solemn purpose:
That spring was probably the happiest period
of Sebastian's existence. He had been delivered
of one book and was already feeling
the throbs of the next one. He was in excellent
health. He had a delightful companion...
Clare posted letters for him, and checked
laundry returns, and saw that he was well
supplied with shaving blades, tobacco and
salted almonds for which he had a special
weakness (80-81).
They must have had a glorious time together,
those two. And it is hard to believe that
the warmth, the tenderness, the beauty of it
has not been gathered, and is not treasured
somewhere, somehow, by some immortal witness
of mortal life. They must have been seen
wandering in Kew Gardens, or Richmond Park
..., or eating ham and eggs at some pretty
inn in their summer rambles in the country,
or reading on the vast divan in Sebastian's
study with the fire cheerfully burning and
an English Christmas already filling the
air with faintly spicy smells on a background
of lavender and leather (81-82).
Are we to imagine "the happiest period of Sebastian'-8
existence" and the "glorious time" with Clare, which
V even considers worthy of having been treasured by
some "immortal witness", to have been based on ordi-
nary activities and pedestrian pleasures (eating ham
and eggs)? The comic incongruity and the deflating
effect this has on V's enterprise of sketching Sebas-
tian's real life is obvious.