Realityin Nabokov's
That Nabokov's fiction presents the reader with a myriad of puzzles
is a commonplace of Nabokov criticism. Solutions to such puzzles do
exist in some cases, but in others the author deliberately crafts a
permanent mystery instead of presenting a certain, if obscured,
resolution. Concealed by the unreliable narration born of madness,
Charles Kinbote of permanent mystery.
One of Nabokov's most beloved
forbears, Nikolaj Gogol&soft;, offers insight on the particular nature
of the mystery of
To discuss our
world, that is, that Nabokov has not created a
fictive geography and globe that includes the nation of Zembla. Given
these assumptions, one notes a strong similarity in the
psychopathology of Kinbote and that of Popri&shachek;&chachek;in:
acute paranoia, absurd megalomaniacal delusion, and a sharply
distorted perception of reality. Such similar states of mind suggest
that Kinbote may well exist in a similar reality to that gleaned
through Popri&shachek;&chachek;in's narration. The king's castle, the
palace coup, and the flight from Zembla are viably read much as we
read the torture of the King of Spain, but instead of the mustard
plasters, we infer the realia of an asylum, pursuit by interns, and
the escape of an institutionalized psychotic.
In the comparative reading with Gogol&soft;, as we move from events
of plot to the matter of narration, we find that Nabokov departs from
Gogol&soft; in that the former forgoes any anchoring points on which
the reader might base a clear version of events. Narrative
unreliability and madness have a rich history in prose, and often,
perhaps typically, the author provides sufficient
objective
cues to the reader, such that the reader
progressively obtains the means for determining a reliable version of
events. Such is the case in a number of Poe's mad narrators, for
example, and in these instances, the reader's perception of the
deviation between reality and the protagonist's view of reality
becomes part of the orchestration of the literary work. Nabokov,
however, does not grant his reader any firm grip on the reality
lurking beneath the surface of Kinbote's narrative, and even the most
fundamental assertions regarding plot events could potentially be
subject to doubt. In Popri&shachek;&chachek;in's tale we never doubt
that we possess some reasonably complete version of
real
events; but with Nabokov, we find ourselves
fluctuating between certitude that an actual event lies behind a
narrated event (Shade and Oleg, for example), and perplexity over
events that seem the product of pure fantasy. Ultimately, the
comparative reading demonstrates the truism of Kinbote's basic
fact
of aesthetics: That
reality
is
neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own
special reality having nothing to do with the average
reality
perceived by the communal eye.