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Re: THOUGHTS on the Pale Fire poem
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On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:17 PM, James Twiggs <jtwigzz@yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]
Rather than replay my own arguments or discuss those that Stan has put
> forth, my purpose here is to show that our shared view, though it may now
> seem the minority opinion, has a long history. Besides a few members of the
> List who seem largely to have fallen silent, Stan and I are joined by a
> number of well-known and well-respected critics, including George Cloyne,
> F.W. Dupee, Alvin B. Kernan, Richard Rorty, Michael Wood, Robert M. Adams,
> Elizabeth Hardwick, and William Monroe.
>
Most of these said the poem was bad. This is a matter of taste, and all the
critics on one side or the other aren't going to change anyone's opinion.
As you said below, the question that's important to the interpretation of
the book is whether it's intentionally bad.
But it’s mainly to William Monroe’s essay “Lords and Owners: Nabokov’s
> Sequestered Imagination” that I wish to call your attention.
>
[...]
I disagree with most of your arguments about the poem, but I think they're
far stronger than Monroe's. If he was going to ignore so much of the
conventional wisdom on poetry and so much of what Nabokov did in other
poems, he could have at least said why.
[...]
In my 12/18/06 message, referred to above, I quoted with approval from R.W.
> Flynt’s 1957 review of *Lolita* in which he spoke of Nabokov’s “really
> fiendish, lyric delight in the bottom absurdity of things.” Flynt also
> praised VN’s Gogol book as “the best treatise on comedy that I know of.” The
> thing I miss in so much Nabokov scholarship is an appreciation of how *
> funny* my version of Pale Fire is in comparison to that of most of his
> recent critics,
>
I don't need to remind you what's one letter away from the comic.
But that is indeed a crucial point, and you won't be surprised if I say that
999 lines of intentionally bad poetry by someone who could do better doesn't
tickle my funnybone. There's plenty of comically bad poetry in the world,
starting with MacGonagall. Undoubtedly that different taste in humor is
one reason for our different interpretations.
Nabokov could have written bad prose just as well or better, but as far as I
know, he never did so at any length. (I hope someone will correct me if I'm
wrong.) My feeling is that he couldn't stand it. He wouldn't even write
much dialogue by people of normal conversational ability, at least in the
novels I've read. So I doubt he could stand to write and publish so much
intentionally bad verse.
especially the otherworlders.
>
It's pleasant (in an un-Nabokovian way) to know I'm following a school! If
you don't mind, who are some of the others, beside Brian Boyd and Victoria
Alexander? (In their books, Vladimir Alexandrov doesn't see much
otherworldly in /Pale Fire/ and Don Johnson doesn't see many worlds in
regression, as I recall.) I recently found an early sketch of the idea that
the book points to a world above ours: Julian Moynahan (1971), /Vladimir
Nabokov/, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 40–45.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Bqag980h9sUC&pg=RA1-PA41#v=onepage&q=&f=false
> =====
>
> So then, to come to the question behind all of this, what will it mean to
> us Shade-doubters if we're forced to accept that Nabokov didn't intend the
> poem to be funny? I can't speak for Stan or the others, but all it will mean
> for me is that Nabokov, by being less of a poet than he thought himself to
> be, wrote a far better novel than even he might have imagined.
>
Oddly enough, it won't mean much to my interpretation if I'm forced to
accept that Nabokov did mean the poem to be amusingly bad.
As long as I'm arguing, I'm going to argue with Joseph Aisenberg, Jansy
Mello, and R. S. Gwynn about Hazel's suicide. It's not just because of one
blind date, or even because of her ugliness. As Carolyn Kunin and I have
pointed out here, very unattractive women can survive that to live happy
lives including a satisfactory quantity and quality of sex. Hazel is not
only "shy"--she has "miseries" and "strange fears, strange fantasies,
strange force of character". She's "morose" and never happy--see especially
lines 350-356. It's clear that she has depression, which is what makes
people kill themselves, and Pete Provost's rejection is the last straw, not
just to her hope for love and sex, but to a lifetime of pain. This may not
be perfect psychological character construction, but it does show that
Nabokov didn't want Hazel to commit suicide over one failure.
And I think that Shade feels guilt over more than the genes that R. S. Gwynn
mentions, which aren't even Shade's responsibility. If I may repeat myself,
he at least /should/ have some idea that his and Sybil's irrational pitying
pessimism about Hazel's looks has contributed greatly to her pain.
Jerry Friedman
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[...]
Rather than replay my own arguments or discuss those that Stan has put
> forth, my purpose here is to show that our shared view, though it may now
> seem the minority opinion, has a long history. Besides a few members of the
> List who seem largely to have fallen silent, Stan and I are joined by a
> number of well-known and well-respected critics, including George Cloyne,
> F.W. Dupee, Alvin B. Kernan, Richard Rorty, Michael Wood, Robert M. Adams,
> Elizabeth Hardwick, and William Monroe.
>
Most of these said the poem was bad. This is a matter of taste, and all the
critics on one side or the other aren't going to change anyone's opinion.
As you said below, the question that's important to the interpretation of
the book is whether it's intentionally bad.
But it’s mainly to William Monroe’s essay “Lords and Owners: Nabokov’s
> Sequestered Imagination” that I wish to call your attention.
>
[...]
I disagree with most of your arguments about the poem, but I think they're
far stronger than Monroe's. If he was going to ignore so much of the
conventional wisdom on poetry and so much of what Nabokov did in other
poems, he could have at least said why.
[...]
In my 12/18/06 message, referred to above, I quoted with approval from R.W.
> Flynt’s 1957 review of *Lolita* in which he spoke of Nabokov’s “really
> fiendish, lyric delight in the bottom absurdity of things.” Flynt also
> praised VN’s Gogol book as “the best treatise on comedy that I know of.” The
> thing I miss in so much Nabokov scholarship is an appreciation of how *
> funny* my version of Pale Fire is in comparison to that of most of his
> recent critics,
>
I don't need to remind you what's one letter away from the comic.
But that is indeed a crucial point, and you won't be surprised if I say that
999 lines of intentionally bad poetry by someone who could do better doesn't
tickle my funnybone. There's plenty of comically bad poetry in the world,
starting with MacGonagall. Undoubtedly that different taste in humor is
one reason for our different interpretations.
Nabokov could have written bad prose just as well or better, but as far as I
know, he never did so at any length. (I hope someone will correct me if I'm
wrong.) My feeling is that he couldn't stand it. He wouldn't even write
much dialogue by people of normal conversational ability, at least in the
novels I've read. So I doubt he could stand to write and publish so much
intentionally bad verse.
especially the otherworlders.
>
It's pleasant (in an un-Nabokovian way) to know I'm following a school! If
you don't mind, who are some of the others, beside Brian Boyd and Victoria
Alexander? (In their books, Vladimir Alexandrov doesn't see much
otherworldly in /Pale Fire/ and Don Johnson doesn't see many worlds in
regression, as I recall.) I recently found an early sketch of the idea that
the book points to a world above ours: Julian Moynahan (1971), /Vladimir
Nabokov/, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 40–45.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Bqag980h9sUC&pg=RA1-PA41#v=onepage&q=&f=false
> =====
>
> So then, to come to the question behind all of this, what will it mean to
> us Shade-doubters if we're forced to accept that Nabokov didn't intend the
> poem to be funny? I can't speak for Stan or the others, but all it will mean
> for me is that Nabokov, by being less of a poet than he thought himself to
> be, wrote a far better novel than even he might have imagined.
>
Oddly enough, it won't mean much to my interpretation if I'm forced to
accept that Nabokov did mean the poem to be amusingly bad.
As long as I'm arguing, I'm going to argue with Joseph Aisenberg, Jansy
Mello, and R. S. Gwynn about Hazel's suicide. It's not just because of one
blind date, or even because of her ugliness. As Carolyn Kunin and I have
pointed out here, very unattractive women can survive that to live happy
lives including a satisfactory quantity and quality of sex. Hazel is not
only "shy"--she has "miseries" and "strange fears, strange fantasies,
strange force of character". She's "morose" and never happy--see especially
lines 350-356. It's clear that she has depression, which is what makes
people kill themselves, and Pete Provost's rejection is the last straw, not
just to her hope for love and sex, but to a lifetime of pain. This may not
be perfect psychological character construction, but it does show that
Nabokov didn't want Hazel to commit suicide over one failure.
And I think that Shade feels guilt over more than the genes that R. S. Gwynn
mentions, which aren't even Shade's responsibility. If I may repeat myself,
he at least /should/ have some idea that his and Sybil's irrational pitying
pessimism about Hazel's looks has contributed greatly to her pain.
Jerry Friedman
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/