CARTESIAN SHADES: GIDE'S LES CAVES DU VATICAN AND NABOKOV'S PALE FIRE

The novels of Andre Gide and Vladimir Nabokov consistently represent the world as a subjective (and sometimes solipsist) experience, relayed by imperfect senses and biased readings. Because perception cannot be separated from interpretation, the characters (and, implicitly, the readers) of these novels are either highly aware, or tragically unaware, of living not so much in the world as in their own representations of it. This would appear to sustain theories of literature as self-referential and self-contained. And yet, while Gide and Nabokov are clearly skeptical about the possibility of knowing the world as such, they do not simply retreat into a sphere of pure autonomous representation. However elusive physical reality may prove, they do not abandon what might be termed metaphysical enquiry. In their novels, especially in Gide's Les Caves du Vatican (The Vatican Cellars) and Nabokov's Pale Fire, this enquiry is bolstered by many allusions to Renaissance thinkers, painters, and playwrights who also highlight the uncertainty of knowledge, the elusiveness of reality and the artifice of representation. Such allusions, while they discourage characters and readers alike from thinking that they might attain anything like truth, nonetheless encourage them to scrutinize their beliefs and actions in accordance with some form of philosophical, more specifically ethical, tenet.