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

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Admittedly not all of Nabokov's thoughts and
problems, and not all of his solutions to the prob-
lems he discusses can be said to be original. A few
short suggestions may suffice to support this state-
ment: as was indicated above, the doubts, for example,
that he entertains concerning what we know (or what
we can know) have occupied the minds of the.. philos-
ophers of all ages and have found expression in their
writings.
Plato was named in connection with Invitation to
a Beheading because the idea that Cincinnatus C. in
that novel conveys of his ideal world has a strong
resemblance to Plato's world of Ideas.
Cincinnatus considers life as a semi-sleep "into
which penetrate in grotesque disguise the sounds and
sights of the real world... 11104. Sleep and its dreams
take him a step in the direction where his ideal world
(his "true reality") is to be found, and his scale,
which is diametrically opposed to that of everybody
else, is completed by death, which is for him in
fact an awakening from the dreams and nonsense of
life into the very presence of this ideal world.
Again, the idea of life as a dream is not originally
Nabokovian, but recurs for example in the writings
of the exponents of what Huxley calls the "Perennial
Philosophy",
the
... metaphysic that recognizes a
divine Reality substantial to the world
of things and lives and minds; the psychology
that finds in the soul something
similar to, or even identical with, divine
Reality; the ethic that places man's final
end in the knowledge of the immanent and
transcendent Ground 5
of all being...