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Re: Twiggs's response to McEwan (quality of Pale Fire poem)
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Dear Jim,
You say, separately,
> It's worth pointing out, however, that Monroe and I
> are hardly alone in seeing Shade's poem as something
> less than stellar.
And:
> Hardwick's judgment is short and
> brutal: "The brilliant Pale Fire is entirely the
> deranged annotation of a dreadful poem."
Surely there is a good deal of room between "stellar" and "dreadful";
my own estimation falls in between.
But your comments go well beyond the question of quality, to a
question of the poet's intention:
> If you're not sometimes aware of a feeling in your leg,
> almost as if it were being tugged at and sometimes
> even jerked, the chances are good that you're missing
> something. So it seems to me.
My own feeling is that Nabokov wrote the Shade poem as fully in the
persona of the hypothetical American poet Shade as he possibly could,
without ironic intention. Then, speaking in another's voice, as
Charles (Chaswe@AOL.COM) suggests, he may well have seen the poem in
a different light, commenting on it, undercutting it, even. But to
me a great deal of the fun, and the power, of Pale Fire springs from
the contrast between the directness of the American voice and the
convoluted inventions of the European. If the distinction is
muddied--if we read deliberate kitsch into the poem, or if Shade and
Kinbote are combined into one author--then I think the game is lost.
> If you wish to pursue these questions further, I'll be
> happy to send you, off-List if that would be more
> appropriate, the bibliographic details and, in some
> cases, web links for the pertinent reviews and essays
> of the writers mentioned above.
I'd be delighted. I cannot promise to follow up on all--I am a
willful, undisciplined reader, and currently on a Jane Austen re-
reading kick--but I'd love to have them available.
Regards, Jamie McEwan (jpmcewan@yahoo.com)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
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You say, separately,
> It's worth pointing out, however, that Monroe and I
> are hardly alone in seeing Shade's poem as something
> less than stellar.
And:
> Hardwick's judgment is short and
> brutal: "The brilliant Pale Fire is entirely the
> deranged annotation of a dreadful poem."
Surely there is a good deal of room between "stellar" and "dreadful";
my own estimation falls in between.
But your comments go well beyond the question of quality, to a
question of the poet's intention:
> If you're not sometimes aware of a feeling in your leg,
> almost as if it were being tugged at and sometimes
> even jerked, the chances are good that you're missing
> something. So it seems to me.
My own feeling is that Nabokov wrote the Shade poem as fully in the
persona of the hypothetical American poet Shade as he possibly could,
without ironic intention. Then, speaking in another's voice, as
Charles (Chaswe@AOL.COM) suggests, he may well have seen the poem in
a different light, commenting on it, undercutting it, even. But to
me a great deal of the fun, and the power, of Pale Fire springs from
the contrast between the directness of the American voice and the
convoluted inventions of the European. If the distinction is
muddied--if we read deliberate kitsch into the poem, or if Shade and
Kinbote are combined into one author--then I think the game is lost.
> If you wish to pursue these questions further, I'll be
> happy to send you, off-List if that would be more
> appropriate, the bibliographic details and, in some
> cases, web links for the pertinent reviews and essays
> of the writers mentioned above.
I'd be delighted. I cannot promise to follow up on all--I am a
willful, undisciplined reader, and currently on a Jane Austen re-
reading kick--but I'd love to have them available.
Regards, Jamie McEwan (jpmcewan@yahoo.com)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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