Quest and Solitude in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lance”

SUZUKI Akira

In his short story “Lance,” Vladimir Nabokov attempts to bring discourses belonging to three different levels (the past, the present, and the future) into a concurrent state in order to focus on a universal theme. What is sought within the text relates to the (infinite, in theory) possibilities of human physical and mental activities. At first glance, the work appears to have some aspects similar to those which could be found in so-called science fiction. But what the author basically critical to science fiction in general as a genre wants to introduce is completely disconnected from that genre. In this work, Nabokov takes up three main subjects: chivalric romance in the medieval era, as represented by Chrétien de Troyes whose works Nabokov studied at Cambridge University and Sir Thomas Malory, mountain climbing in modern days, and interplanetary exedition in the future.

In some works of Nabokov, explorers or questers often follow unhappy fates, as seen in a one-act verse play, The Pole, his last Russian novel, The Gift, and one of his short stories originally written in Russian and translated into English, “The Aurelian.” In “Lance,” the central character returns from his destination planet (which, in all probability, can be identified as Mars). However, it is not clear what was obtained there, and it becomes fatally difficult for his parents to communicate with him. As this situation exemplifies, when challenging an unknown territory, one must be isolated and their solitude can never be saved.