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

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this attack of his second self he hever recovers:
I could not quite make out at the time what
was going on in me - but now I know what it
was: my passion for my double was surging
anew with a muffled but formidable violence
which soon escaped all conctrol (124).
Hermann's peace of mind and secure sense of identity
can only be regained if one of his selves is destroyed.
The murder of Felix, which has on one level a purely
practical function (getting hold of the insurance
money) is to do this for him: "... if you think that my
prompter's name was Gain - capital G not C- then you
are mightily mistaken" (100).
But the crime is also to fulfill another function.
Felix is murdered, but he is then dressed in Hermann's
clothes. The murder is made to look like a suicide.
Hermann puts on Felix's clothes and assumes his role.
The purpose of the crime is not only to dispose of one
of Hermann's selves and enable him to re-establish
one identity for himself; Hermann also hopes that
the crime will enable him to discard his own old un-
happy self, and to slip into a new and completely
different, and happy identity.
However, he finds that he cannot do either. He can-
not completely resume his old identity: "Try as I may
I do not succeed in getting back into my original en-
velope, let alone making myself comfortable in my old
self" (29). But he cannot completely discard his old
self either. He is still conscious of it, so much so
that he tries to hide it by growing a beard: "... that
beard of mine has done jolly well, and in such a short
time too! I am disguised so perfectly, as to be in-