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

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"tr. ue reality" in that it allows him to gain and to
convey insights that neither science nor philosophy
can give. Bergson was already named as having expressed
the same conviction, but the idea can be
traced farther back. Sidney, in his Defense of Poesie,
makes the point that the poet "makes direct contact
with the world of Platonic ideas", and is in his art
"not imitating the idea as reflected palely in real
life, but is directly embodying his own vision of the
ideal. "109 The position taken by Bergson and Nabokov
is also a Romantic one, its ideas perhaps best expressed
in Shelley's Defense of Poetry, where he, too,
claims that "the poet, through his use of the imagination,
comes directly into contact with the world of
Platonic ideas, and so with true reality, instead
of simply imitating reflections of these ideas.
Quite often, then, Nabokov seems not so much to
be proposing something truly original, but rather to
be re-asserting propositions and convictions of which
some have quite a tradition in the histories of philosophy
and literature. His true originality, which
has so often been praised, lies rather in his way of
presenting these same propositions, of uttering these
same convictions in unusual and surprising contexts,
and in turning his quest for reality into a comic quest.
The term "comic quest" is not meant to imply that
Nabokov's novels follow the structure or the action
line of comedies. Ada might be named as the only exception
in that it does to a degree follow a typical
comedy formula, more specifically the formula that