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

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a sizable dot in printer's ink on palpable paper"
(550), changing at the very moment of perception
"because I myself am in a constant state of trivial
metamorphosis" (549), and becoming in its turn part
of the Past. It follows logically that Van should
define it as an "imaginary point" (551), something
which it seems impossible to grasp and enjoy. All
this is very close to something that was quoted in
connection with The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
Alan Watts' statements about time are worth repeating
here:
if
... we open our eyes and see clearly,
it becomes obvious that there is no other
time than this instant, and that the past
and the future are abstractions without
any concrete reality.
Until this becomes clear, it seems that
our life is all past and future, and that
the present is nothing more than the infinitesimal
hairline which divides them...
But through 'awakening to the-instant',
one sees that this is the reverse of the
truth: it is rather the past and future
which are the fleeting illusions and the
present which is "
eternally real.
Van having discussed the Future as an "absolute noth-
ingness" (550) and the "true Present" as an "imaginary
point", it would seem that in his system (and using
Watts' words) "our life is all Past", and consists
only in our memory of what has been. There is, however,
something in Van's theory which corresponds to Watts'
"awakening to the instant", and this is what Van calls
"the Deliberate Present" (549). Driving past a row of
poplars, he says, one may wish "to isolate and stop
one of them, thus making the green blur reveal and
offer, yes, offer, its every leaf" (549). In the same