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

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rendering a certain sound thus: 'H'm'" (115) to a long
discussion of the epistolic form of narration (70) and
to the spectacular parody of the opening of a chapter.
In fact he offers three openings (Ch. III) all following
well established patterns, but all of which he
rejects because of the weaknesses he sees in them; and
from there he unceremoniously slips back into his narrative
without really having opened his chapter at all.
He takes the same liberties with the end of his tale,
if indeed it can be said to have an end. He toys with
no less than four possible endings that occur to him
at various stages (the first before he has even de-
8
cided on a title) and which are born of different
moods. One of them, although it has almost a touch of
probability about it, is no more than an evil dream9,
two are just fleeting thoughts, the results of his
10;
anxiety one, a lengthy and elaborate one, he wickedly
declares to be a parody of Turgenev and Dostoievsky
(188-190) and thus makes clear that it is not to be
taken seriously either. (It is not the only parody of
Dostoievsky, by the way).
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At the end, the reader is
left with the rather odd picture of Hermann-making a
speech from his window: "Frenchmen! This is a re-
hearsal. Hold those policemen" (222) and is left to
wonder what really happens to Hermann and the others.
From time to time he makes mistakes. He gets the facts
wrong. Various experiences blend, and what belongs to
one gets mixed up in his account of another one, so
that the time sequence is often overthrown. He does
not erase the faulty passages because, he says, that