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

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as the "[passing] from one state of being into
another. "39 Neither of them sees death as the end of
everything, nor does Cincinnatus C. His view is
perhaps the most optimistic of all. Grim though his
view of life is, death is for him an awakening, a
passing on into a better and more real world. He can
therefore cross out the word "death" in his manuscript
(IB, 190), and the epigraph of the novel by
the imaginary poet Delalande is fully applicable to
Cincinnatus' experience. His imagination and his
art have shown him a way out of the prison of this
world and this life and out of the prison of time,
and has furnished him with proof of his immortality.
It must be remembered at this point what power
Nabokov attributes to the imagination and to art
and what belief he has in their ability to answer
questions that both science and philosophy have left
unanswered. Cincinnatus' intense imagination prepares
the ground for an insight that surpasses common knowledge.
Imagination and art with him (and with Mr. R.. )
become vision, so that, even though he does not
experience death physically, his mind is yet able to
apprehend the mental experience death may bring with
it and find therein salvation and peace.
Krug, although a philosopher, never attains this
knowledge and this comfort. Confronted, as has been
stated, with very concrete harassments, which prove
too much to cope with, locked away in a very material
prison, he also fails to overcome the metaphysical
doubts and harassments that torture him.