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

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and the Present. Like his creator, Van does not in-
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clude the Future in his concept of time. "Sham Time"
he calls it (548), and "a fantasm belonging to another
category of thought essentially different from that
of the Past which, at least, was here a moment ago- ...
"
(544). The Past he calls at one point "the colored
nothingness of the no-longer" (550), which is "intangible
and 'never-to-be-revisited "" (544). For a moment
it seems to become an abstraction like the Future.
However, it possesses reality insofar as it exists in
one's mind. In fact, Van speaks about it in very concrete
terms when he considers it "not as the dissolution
of Time implied by immemorial metaphors picturing
transition" (544), but as "an accumulation of sensa"
(544), "a constant accumulation of images [which]
can
be easily contemplated and listened to, tested and
tasted at random", and as "a generous chaos out of
which the genius of total recall,..., can pick anything
he pleases" (545).
His treatment of the Present is rather more compli-
cated. What is commonly called the "Present" is really
"the constant building up of the Past, its smoothly
and relentlessly rising level" (551). We are aware of
the "Present" as a "time span" (550), to which, again,
our mind gives duration (560), but into this awareness
always creeps "the lingering freshness oý the Past
still perceived as part of the nowness" (550). What we
normally perceive is not the "true Present". That is
"an instant of zero duration, represented by a rich
smudge, as the dimensionless point of geometry is by