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

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Swann et la Lesbie de Catulle" (66); he is, when he
first comes to Ardis at fourteen, "a schoolboy of
genius" (59); he is "the first American to have won
(at seventeen! ) the Dudley Prize (for an essay on
Insanity and Eternal Life)" (186); and at thirty-one
he has gained "'honors' and a 'position' that many
unbelievably laborious men do not reach at fifty"
(471). He publishes several works, among them an anti-
Freudian paper: The Farce of Group Therapy in Sexual
Maladjustment (577), but considers himself an "artist"
rather than a "savant" (471) and thinks of his publications
as "buoyant and bellicose exercises in literary
style" (578). Almost casually it is mentioned
that Van is also an excellent tennis-player and tabletennis
player, a first-rate chess player, and that he
is good at fencing and shooting. And, of course, he
has the singular talent of not only walking but literally
dancing on his hands, a talent, however, which
he loses at eighteen after a duel.
Fowler quotes Nabokov himself as calling Ada and
Van "rather horrible people"32, and it is difficult
to contradict him and all the critics who share his
opinion, for while they may excel in awareness and
genius, Van and Ada are, even at an early age (and
remain later in life) inferior with regard to human
qualities, although Ada has some redeeming traits.
As was stated above, Ada considers herself and Van
as an immensely superior couple, a view which, quite
obviously, they hold of themselves even as youngsters,
and which makes "their conversations reek of mutual