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

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THEEYE
Within the general context of Nabokov's preoccupation
with reality some very different novels from different
periods of his career centre round the specific question
whether it is possible to know and understand what another
person really is behind what he appears to be. To
put it in terms used in the introduction: is it possible
for anyone to know the "true reality" of another person,
or is all our knowledge of others limited to their
"average reality", to those of their characteristics which
are immediately obvious, or even to the images we create
of them influenced by our own attitudes, interests, pre-
occupations
and emotions?
The Eye1, the first of Nabokov's novels to introduce
the theme, denies the possibility of real knowledge
about others and ends on a note of despair, for, it
implies, if real mutual knowledge and understanding are
impossible, genuine contact and communication become
impossible too, and this leads in the end to loneliness
and complete isolation.
The Eye goes further than this, casting doubt on
what we generally take for the "reality" of life: if
we do not know rea1 people, but, as will be shown,
". phantoms", is not what we take for life merely a
picture in a deceptive mirror, or a "shimmer on a
screen"? 4.
Pnin and Lolita, although superficially they do not
seem to have anything in common with The Eye, explore
and dramatize some of the theories evolved in the early