| The world of objective time and space is essentially a mirage in Nabokov's fiction, a prison of collective cliches that torments consciousness by attempting to both create and confine it. Nabokov's literary exploration of consciousness concentrates on the individual's defiance of the collective paradigm of external reality and his subjective responses to the temporal and spatial dimensions which structure perception. Reality, as Nabokov defines it, is ultimately "a very subjective affair" and, in order to comprehend the concept of subjective existence in his fiction, it is necessary to examine both the underlying theories of time and space which define the parameters of the artificial world of objective reality and the individual transmutations of those confines that create the subjective universe.; Nabokov's aesthetic is a derivative of his cosmology. He continually plays the claims of "realism" against the structure of individual "reality," and although collective versions of reality seem initially to be significant aspects of his fiction, they are ultimately screens of distortion that fall down like cardboard props. The logic of mnemonics and imagination structure art as they do reality. The surface of the literary text is a ruse in the Nabokovian aesthetic; the real worlds of his fiction are never explicit, they are all subtly hidden and require detailed reassembly on the part of the reader. The author makes much use of several traditional literary themes, primarily the concepts of madness, duality, and fictionality, yet all of these ideas are exploited in utterly innovative ways and ultimately subvert rather than reaffirm the superficial plots of his fiction. Through a detailed examination of Despair, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Invitation to a Beheading, Bend Sinister, Transparent Things, Ada, and Look at the Harlequins! this technique of subversion becomes evident. Art is ultimately a metaphor for something which exceeds it and the metaphysical implications of this aesthetic are crucial aspects of all of these novels. Conventional plot and characterization finally dissolve in Nabokov's fiction; in the end, individual consciousness provides both the subject and the structure of his art. |
