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

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of his publications as "buoyant and bellicose exercises
in literary style" (578). That he should have
recourse to stylization all along is a logical consequence
of his aim, which is not to write a love story
of the conventional kind and for its own sake, but to
use this love story as a medium through which to solve
the riddle of Time. To have told it in a way that
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would have made of it more of "a social reality"
in which the reader might have got emotionally involved,
would have stood in the way of his philosophical
quest and would have blurred the results.
Van's investigation of the texture of time has also
yielded what he calls the "Deliberate Present", those
moments during which man is liberated fox a few seconds
from what is usually called "reality" and during which
he experiences "true reality", or, in Van's words,
reality that has lost its quotes. With the mind remaining
unchanged for just a few seconds, the experience
is one of an escape from "normal" time, from the
instability of things, from succession, changes, suffering,
and death. But they are fleeting moments, and if
they can be repeated, as in Van's and Ada's love, they
cannot be made to last. After the bliss at Ardis that
granted them these experiences, Van and Ada have to
return to "average reality" and "average" time, and
everything these imply. They are never more aware of
this than during their old age. The sufferings separation
caused them have been overcome, but they can no
longer revolt against pain, or deny death. "Who said
I shall die? ", Van said when refusing to acknowledge