Collin Tobin: ."..Was it not Nabokov's ultimate desire to be able to escape the confines of one's singular consciousness, and enter into others at will? ...Thoughts?

 

Jansy Mello: Trying to follow C.Tobin's interpretation of Bend Sinister's totalitarian state...of mind, I started to conjecture if Nabokov's "serial souls" or "ideal readers" somehow implied in the fantasy of shaping the world according to one all-encompassing singular consciousness ( his own, of course ! As in CTobin's words: to "enter into others at will". I cannot imagine Nabokov wish to become indistinguishable from every other Vladimir, Peter and John *). 

My conclusion is NO (very emphatically: no!).

Vladimir Nabokov was too curious about idiosyncratic differences, divine details and the mysteries of the world...He loved his childhood memories and living too much to adhere to any sort of entropic project...

Thoughts? 

 

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* "Your groping individualities will become interchangeable and, instead of crouching in the prison cell of an illegal ego, the naked soul will be in contact with that of every other man in this land; nay, more: each of you will be able to make his abode in the elastic inner self of any other citizen, and flutter from one to another, until you know not whether you are Peter or John, so closely locked will you be in the embrace of the State... ", from the quote by C.Tobin .