Making a Virtue of Necessity: Pattern and Freedom in Nabokov's "Ada"

Abstract

Van Veen, narrator of Ada, responds inevitability of change by creating elaborate, repetitive patterns; in this way he hopes, if not stop time, at least make it unfold according his design. His creator Nabokov, controlling metaphysics of Van's world, arranges matters so that Van's attempts are never completely successful. But Nabokov sees what Van does not: that pattern itself can become a prison. Paradoxically, it is in partial defeat of Van's artistic patterns that Nabokov achieves freedom that perfect pattern would deny. Central his attempt control is Van's philosophical work, The Texture of Time. Here he first cuts off real time from concept of space; he rejects, unequivocally, artificial concept of space-tainted, space-parasited time, space-time of relativist literature.' Van rejects space as the Imposter because he wishes free from idea that it is a medium that can be divided and quantified as space can. True time, according Van (usually referred by a capital T), is Motionless Time (p. 574). Freed from sequence, Time's passage can be noticed through an accumulation of (p. 579). To capture these sensa it is necessary that events be closely attended to by a tense-willed mind (p. 574). Once they are attended to, it is through memory that sensations may be captured. The future, properly speaking, does not exist; present exists only for duration of a few seconds in attentive