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

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is it a predictable "cause-and-effect sequence" (92).
Something unforeseen can happen at any moment and
interrupt a development that seemed unavoidable or
inescapable. There may be a miraculous last-minute
rescue "even if the lunette has actually closed around
your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath"
(92). To put it in terms of something that has already
been discussed: looking back into the past, it is
possible to distinguish in a person's life some underlying
pattern or "thematic design". On the crucial day
at the hotel this design in Hugh's life has already
become so prominent that the author is aware of it
and, being an artist, has a premonition of how it might
be completed. He ventures to induce in Hugh a vague
feeling of impending danger. But he can do no more.
The future being the abstraction it is for him, he
cannot foresee the pattern with any certainty. The
development he foresees may be likely, but it is
"chimeric" (92).
This thought, pursued to its logical conclusion,
means no less
-than
that the design of a person's life
can really be seen through only when the last little
section has been added to the mosaic, that is, after
the person's death. It is only then that anything
valid can be said about that person's life, and that
any understanding of it is possible. It ýs only then
that the significance of its events becomes clear,
that the significance attached to some diminishes and
that others become prominent and are seen to have
been
decisive.