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

- 236 -
forbidden knowledge of which he has been allowed a
taste. By this taste, as if by something indecent, he
feels "corrupted", "terrified", and yet strangely
attracted, eager to know more (I, 160ff. ). The curiosity
and the wonder aroused in him by "playful death"
(I, 140) remain with him throughout his life. There
is a time when he suspects that everybody, except only
himself, knows the whole truth (II, 167-172) and that
this truth is kept from him on purpose. There is a
time when it seems to him that only people insane can
live with the terrible uncertainty about what awaits
them after death (II, 173-176); and there is the moment
when he decides "to explore and fight / The foul, the
inadmissible abyss" and to make this his main purpose
in life (II, 177-181).
For a long time there are only questions and
speculations, caused not only by his general perplexity
but also by the deaths of his Aunt Maud and his
daughter Hazel: "What momant in the gradual decay /
Does resurrection choose? " and who is the determining
force behind it? (II, 209-211). Should we scorn a
hereafter simply because we cannot verify it? After
all, our present life was something unknown to us
prior to life. Might not existence after death be
just as wild and nonsensical and weird and wonderful
as this life? Paradise and Hell are both equally
4.
likely (II, 217-230). But even though it should be
paradise, he will turn it and eternity down unless
the tenderness and passion of this life, the joy in
little things, and the daily trivia are all there to