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

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sions, shows that even the "fabulous kingdom" Zembla
is based on Kinbote's surroundings, that "Zembla" is
indeed synonymous with "Appalachia".
55
Kinbote's explanation
of the name (though wrong) is a valuable
clue and confirms McCarthy's statement: "... the name
Zembla is a corruption not of Russian zeml a, but of
Semblerland, a land of reflections, or 'resemblers"'
(265).
Into the Zemblan fable Kinbote, finally, projects
himself as King Charles the Beloved, victim of the
Zemblan revolution, exiled and persecuted by the Extremists.
The King looks exactly like him, and he
shares his fate: Kinbote, too, is an exile.
from his note to line 894 that he is rea11y
-It
appears
one V. Botkin "of Russian descent" (267) who teaches
in the Russian Department and who, because of his
peculiarities, is subject to all sorts of attacks and
signs of unkindness from those around him. In the
King's fear of death and murder one recognizes Kinbote's
(Botkin's) own constant harrowing fears of
"death's fearful shadow" (96) which make his nights
restless, and his visions of "relentlessly advancing
assassins" (97). Onto Zembla, and onto the figure of
King Charles, Kinbote (Botkin) projects his "persecution
mania" (98), which those around him have recognized,.
and which is "complicated by the commonplace
conspiracy mania of a faculty common room. " 56
Transferring the drab and unpleasant real events
into the imaginative fable of Zembla, Kinbote emerges
as an artist who follows the same principles of art