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Unreal geography
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Jerry Friedman writes, in response to John Morris:
> Recalling some of the recent posts about the possible "real" location of
> New Wye, it's interesting to note that VN, by choosing not to set the
> book in the recognizable 50 states, lays the ground for this being a
> world in which "Zembla," too, may exist.
I think this is a good point, and a different version of this
blurriness seems to have been part of Nabokov's first thoughts,
according to VNAY, pp. 306-307.
> If the world of Pale Fire
> contains the states of Appalachia and Utana, the towns of New Wye and
> Cedarn, why not Zembla and Onhava?
But there's a difference. There are consistent clues that let
us pin New Wye down to four counties (and some lepidopteral
research might improve that). We can draw a much bigger
circle that probably contains Cedarn. Both of them require only
changed borders and names. But there's no such peninsula
as Zembla, and two of the details are hard to reconcile:
Gutnish is spoken on an island in the Baltic, but those
Izumruds off the northern coast suggest that Zembla reaches
the Arctic Ocean (not to mention being an obvious invention
to explain Izumrudov=Emerald--and what is going through
Kinbote's delusional mind here?
> Unless we believe that
> Kinbote/Botkin invented these American place-names too, but surely
> that's going too far. He would have had to change Shade's poem as well
> -- see lines 508-09, for instance.
I think I agree with you, but now I'm thinking that the
parallel between the "spurious" origin of Lake Ozero and that
of the Izumruds is very striking.
> (And by the way, the reference by
> Shade here to "Yewshade, in another, higher state" is another possible
> indication that New Wye's equivalent location in our world -- I'm trying
> to avoid the word "real," obviously! -- is not New York State. If
> "higher" means due north, we've run out of states. Though I suppose New
> England could be considered "higher" than Ithaca.)
It never occurred to me that "higher" could mean "north of". I
took it to be "higher in altitude", that is, in the Western
mountains.
> This answers none of the vexing questions about the nature and degree of
> Botkin's impersonation of Kinbote, but I do think it was a masterstroke
> on VN's part to unsettle the entire geography of the novel.
It's also another of the reminders that you're reading fiction.
Jerry Friedman
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> Recalling some of the recent posts about the possible "real" location of
> New Wye, it's interesting to note that VN, by choosing not to set the
> book in the recognizable 50 states, lays the ground for this being a
> world in which "Zembla," too, may exist.
I think this is a good point, and a different version of this
blurriness seems to have been part of Nabokov's first thoughts,
according to VNAY, pp. 306-307.
> If the world of Pale Fire
> contains the states of Appalachia and Utana, the towns of New Wye and
> Cedarn, why not Zembla and Onhava?
But there's a difference. There are consistent clues that let
us pin New Wye down to four counties (and some lepidopteral
research might improve that). We can draw a much bigger
circle that probably contains Cedarn. Both of them require only
changed borders and names. But there's no such peninsula
as Zembla, and two of the details are hard to reconcile:
Gutnish is spoken on an island in the Baltic, but those
Izumruds off the northern coast suggest that Zembla reaches
the Arctic Ocean (not to mention being an obvious invention
to explain Izumrudov=Emerald--and what is going through
Kinbote's delusional mind here?
> Unless we believe that
> Kinbote/Botkin invented these American place-names too, but surely
> that's going too far. He would have had to change Shade's poem as well
> -- see lines 508-09, for instance.
I think I agree with you, but now I'm thinking that the
parallel between the "spurious" origin of Lake Ozero and that
of the Izumruds is very striking.
> (And by the way, the reference by
> Shade here to "Yewshade, in another, higher state" is another possible
> indication that New Wye's equivalent location in our world -- I'm trying
> to avoid the word "real," obviously! -- is not New York State. If
> "higher" means due north, we've run out of states. Though I suppose New
> England could be considered "higher" than Ithaca.)
It never occurred to me that "higher" could mean "north of". I
took it to be "higher in altitude", that is, in the Western
mountains.
> This answers none of the vexing questions about the nature and degree of
> Botkin's impersonation of Kinbote, but I do think it was a masterstroke
> on VN's part to unsettle the entire geography of the novel.
It's also another of the reminders that you're reading fiction.
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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