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

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specialist in lilies may know even more about it,
but neither will know it completely. And so with
everything; with persons as well:
You can know more and more about one thing
but you can never know everything about
one thing: it's hopeless. 64
There is another way to knowledge though. The in-
sights revealed in Sebastian's novels are not the
results of analytical thought, but resemble those
which mystics are described as receiving through
intuition:
There come to many the sudden moments of
intuitive perception, elusive, fading
quickly, but of deep significance, illuminations
which they feel reveal to them new
facets of reality.
65
At such moments the mind is freed from all the limi-
tations set to it by the intellect, and obtains
knowledge different from, and beyond, that obtained
through the senses or through rational and intellec-
tual processes. This knowledge cannot be built up
slowly and consciously. It is not the sum of various
bits of knowledge that the mind can gather and accu-
mulate. It comes suddenly and unexpectedly, in a
flash, and unsummoned:
The insights of intuition
... often have
the appearance of something given, a sort
of revelation coming from a something
outside oneself. The mind, often in a state
of passivity, makes a sudden leap. What has
been before obscure becomes 66
clear.
At such moments "average reality" is transcended and
"true reality" reveals itself. A man's sense of the
significance of all things is sharpened, no matter
how humble they are. The pattern of life may become