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RES: [NABOKV-L] Gingko Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos by John
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Matt Roth: Nice catch, Jansy. Your observation (that Kinbote describes the cards, not VN) foregrounds a particularly thorny problem: how to discern the relative reliability of Kinbote's narrative details. Is his New Wye (and Cedarn) narrative reliable, while the Zemblan narrative is a fantasy? Is there a test we can use to discern the reliability of CK's statements?
JM: Actually there’s a loud amusement park of wheeling lights and noises all over the article in question. Shade is recognizably a Nabokov creature (“the index cards that John Shade (like his maker, Nabokov) used for composing his poem”), whereas Kinbote is seen ambivalently, as a shameless commandant and impostor on the one hand, and as an equal or even identical to Nabokov on the other, as in “ printed exactly as Nabokov described them” (if his foreword in fact has furnished the necessary elements to construct the note-cards). My mind spins along and no fine thread is forthcoming. The Shadeans versus Kinboteans debate now favors Kinbote, after all, in a moebius-strip twirl when what’s inside is also outside!
Related to Shade’s scissors, I’m equally confounded (this word sounds angrier than merely saying that I feel confused!). I cannot forget that the sun is a star. \Nor that metallic scissors reflect any source of light, irrespectively. Alexey’s idea about a popular saying is good: I wonder what it is.
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JM: Actually there’s a loud amusement park of wheeling lights and noises all over the article in question. Shade is recognizably a Nabokov creature (“the index cards that John Shade (like his maker, Nabokov) used for composing his poem”), whereas Kinbote is seen ambivalently, as a shameless commandant and impostor on the one hand, and as an equal or even identical to Nabokov on the other, as in “ printed exactly as Nabokov described them” (if his foreword in fact has furnished the necessary elements to construct the note-cards). My mind spins along and no fine thread is forthcoming. The Shadeans versus Kinboteans debate now favors Kinbote, after all, in a moebius-strip twirl when what’s inside is also outside!
Related to Shade’s scissors, I’m equally confounded (this word sounds angrier than merely saying that I feel confused!). I cannot forget that the sun is a star. \Nor that metallic scissors reflect any source of light, irrespectively. Alexey’s idea about a popular saying is good: I wonder what it is.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/