Subject
Re: DN on Mello/Kunin Pale Fire discussion
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If I may elbow my way into this discussion, my reading has never revealed an
indisputable rejection by VN of the theory that either Shade or Kinbote may
have invented the other. I hope this will help coax Dmitri to make ³an
interesting comment² about the book that I consider one of the highest
achievements of the novelists¹ art in the distinct and original category (
that I have invented) of 20th century American English.
Andrew Stuart
On 8/27/06 8:55 AM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
>
>
> Subject:
> RE: [NABOKV-L] FW: Why hide?
> From:
> "Dmitri Nabokov"
>
> Date:
> Sun, 27 Aug 2006 06:51:05 +0200
> To:
> "'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> A comment for Carolyn, Jansy, et al.:
>
> Unfortunately I must mercilessly budget my time and can participate only
> passively in the current lively and variegated discourse about the many facets
> of Pale Fire. In the first paragraph of the letter below, we read "The idea
> that Shade or Kinbote is the inventor of the other is another theory entirely,
> a theory that Nabokov himself ridiculed." This notion is expressed in an
> authoritative tone, as if it were a previously established given in need of no
> further discussion. Can we really be so sure? Where does Nabokov conclusively
> affirm it? If one enlightened me in this regard, I think I could make an
> interesting comment.
>
> Greetings,
>
> DN
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Carolyn Kunin
> Sent: samedi, 26. août 2006 21:47
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: [NABOKV-L] FW: Why hide?
>
>
>
> Jansy asks "why did Kinbote have to hide away the cards with the poem," and
> wonders when Kinbote became an invention of Shade's.
>
> Dear Jansy,
>
> My theory is that Pale Fire is Nabokov's re-invention of Robert Louis
> Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and that Kinbote and Gradus are suppressed
> alternate personalities of John Shade who are able to take over his
> consciousness following the stroke described in the fourth canto. The idea
> that Shade or Kinbote is the inventor of the other is another theory entirely,
> a theory that Nabokov himself ridiculed.
>
> The insane John Shade ("Kinbote") has to hide the poem because Sybil and
> several professors want to get it away from him, fearing what he might do with
> it.
>
> After Shade's personality is "killed" and the alternate personality of Kinbote
> emerges, to his wife and colleagues it seems that Shade has gone completely
> mad. He is hospitalized for a while, but manages to escape. All this Kinbote
> narrates as if he were the King of Zembla escaping a revolution.
>
> This explains the chronology problem that you mentioned. It seems that
> Kinbote's perception of the present (during Shade's hospitalization for
> example) is projected into the past (the Zemblan revolution). Possibly
> because he was "born" when Shade was 14 or 15, his perception of time is
> distorted into a kind of fugue. Nabokov may have been aware that the periods
> when an alternate personality emerges into consciousness used to be called a
> "fugue state," experienced by the dominant personality as a blackout.
>
> Carolyn
>
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