MANFRED PUETZ
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of the given, there is no such restraint in some novels of, say, Nabokov
or Vonnegut. Nabokov once formulated , in an interview, his belief that
what we commonly call objective reality is a form of impure imagina–
tion. This conviction is tested by a long train of Nabokovian characters
from Luzhin, Hermann Karlovich, and Kinbote
to
Smurov, Salvator
Waltz, or Ivan Veen. However, few of them are as noteworthy as
Charles Kinbote in
Pale Fire
who imposes his imaginary concepts with
inspired stubbornness on the realities that surround him. His mythical
dream of the lost kingdom of Zembla and the aftermath of the Zemblan
revolution provides roles for virtually everybody in the novel and
relevant niches for any event within his jmaginary domain. So over–
powering are the Zemblan fantasies whirling around his seemingly
insane self that even the actual disaster of his friend's death cannot
wake Kinbote up. Of course,
Pale Fire
is a very special case insofar as
Nabokov manages
to
obliterate the borderlines between fact and fancy,
reality and imaginary projection, to a degree where all certainties must
crumble. Neither the precise identities of Shade or Kinbote nor their
exact realtionship can be established beyond doubt. The only thing we
can be sure of in
Pale Fire
is that we are never sure when and where the
real ends and the mythic begins.
Kurt Vonnegut's novels abound in test cases for the new strategy of
self-definition via applied mythotherapy. Eliot Rosewater
(God Bless
You, Mr. Rosewater)
and Billy Pilgrim
(Slaughterhouse Five)
try to
reinvent themselves and their universe, as Vonnegut puts it, using their
imaginations to edge world and self out of their old moorings.
Rosewater abandons his role as the head of one of the wealthiest
corporations in the country and slips into a fantasy which permits him
to become a volunteer fireman and build a new world around this
image of himself. Billy Pilgrim claims to have been captured by a
scouting party from Tralfamadore and begins to interpret world and
fate in terms of Tralfamadorian philosophy.
The Sirens of Titan
in its
entirety is the myth of how the histories of Mars, Titan, and the earth
are secretely interlinked. And in
Cat's Cradle
Bokonon invents what
amounts to a new mythology and religion for the people of San
Lorenzo and assigns himself one of two main roles in a fictional
scheme which explains history and life
to
them. Less subtle than
Nabokov's heroes in their attempts as well as in their failures, Vonne–
gut's myth-makers pay a heavy price by either losing touch with
humanity or, as in Bokonon's case, ultimately destroying the world.
To complete the picture of fancy's ambiguous domination over
the world of the given, one might look at Donald Barthelme's novel,
