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

- 367
-
... a string of stock scenes from the
traditional novel - the young man's
return to the ancestral manor, the
festive picnic, the formal dinner, a
midnight blaze on the old estate, the
distraught hero's flight at dawn from
'hearth and house as the result of a
misunderstanding, the, duel, the hero's
profligacy in the great metropolis,
and so forth. 16
Appel points out how "Moments from Tolstoy become
dazzling set pieces in Veen: the first kiss, the
fateful letter, the tearful farewell. "17 ,... every-
thing in his story is taking place against a back-
ground of jaded literary conventions
...
18
11
is aware of this all the time and points it out to
the reader, thereby at once parodistically revealing
the weakness of the old story-telling devices, stress-
ing the fact that they have been by now used too long
But
Van
and too often, casting an ironic light on his own
story and saving it from becoming like those he is
imitating. He is aware of all the conventional turns
and tricks that occur in his own book and exposes-
them in his comments: "... as Jane Austen might have
phrased it" (8); "... the romantic mansion appeared
on the gentle eminence of old novels" (35); "A coach-
man... came straight from a pretzel-string of old
novels" (154); "It was - to continue the novelistic
structure -a long, joyful, delicious dinner... " (250);
"When lightning struck two days later (an old image
4.
that is meant to intimate a flash-back to an old
barn)... " (284). Blanche speaks quaint and stilted
English that is "spoken only in obsolete novels" (292),
and Lucette "returned the balled handkerchief of many
an old romance to her bag... " (369). These are only