Subject
Stevenson, Versipel, Tolstoy.
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Dear Carolyn,
I really don¹t have a low opinion of Stevenson¹s J & H, and I can
understand why the young Nabokov enjoyed it so much. I think I read it at
about the same age that VN read it, but my reading was that of an American
child in the 1960s. One of my other favorite authors at that age was Ian
Fleming, and, along with watching the 007 movies (Sean Connery the only
real Bond), I had also seen on TV the J & H movie (1930s? Lon Chaney?) I
read and enjoyed Stevenson¹s story, but not with the mind of a brilliant and
aristocratic young Russian in the early years of the last century.
So, I stick by the views I expressed in my last post including my belief
that, in his mature years, VN knew that he was the superior artist. VN¹s
serenely confidant conviction that he would eventually be acknowledged as
one of the truly great writers of his time was freely expressed and well
documented. For this reason, among others, I doubt that the 60-ish VN was
still so impressed with Jekyll/Hyde as to make it the keystone of one of his
greatest novels, rather than rely on his own potent imagination to fill that
space.
As Boyd describes in ³The American Years,² when VN chose Stevenson he also
chose work from Washington Irving, Benjamin Constant, Maupassant, Austen,
Pushkin, Dickens, Gogol, Flaubert, Kafka, Mann, Tolstoy, and Chekov.
Although he didn¹t consign RLS to the same severe category as the gravely
flawed Mann, there¹s nothing to show that, at the age at which he wrote PF,
he was still under the influence of an old boyhood favorite.
As for versipels, again, I stick with my original view. It was the right
word, the right image, for Shade to have his readers see -- this beast of a
muse, like Sinbad¹s Old Man of the Sea, or Coleridge¹s Ancient Mariner with
his albatross, or William Burroughs with a monkey on his back [warning:
joke].
To plagiarize myself, yes, one¹s muse can be angelic, and one¹s muse can be
demonic, and when your muse requires you to dissect the death of your
daughter, and your own inevitable death, than your muse can certainly be an
evil entity. As for the word versipel also meaning a changeling, I just
don¹t think VN required his readers to dig that deeply into this one image
in this instance. It¹s an interesting thought, in regard to a work in which
a change -- from life to death -- is such a major theme. But I see no bold
lycanthropy fascination running a race with lepidopteral imagery through
VN¹s work. I could be wrong.
Actually, the story that approaches the closest to the themes of Pale Fire
is Tolstoy¹s The Death of Ivan Ilich. Here we have one of the finest stories
ever written, a story that moves with the impersonal and unstoppable pace of
approaching night, as Tolstoy unveils scene after scene in the life of an
ordinary man of worldly achievements and worldly concerns who one day is
roughly pushed out of the path of worldly pleasure by an absurd accident. An
accident that, incredibly, demands a detour onto the path of death. As
steadily as the fall of water resounding in a cave, Ilich is forcibly
marched into the final terrifying and degrading illness that will destroy
all of life¹s pleasure, all of one¹s desperate hope, and, brutally, life
itself. But then, in one of the greatest moments in fiction, just as worldly
life ends, we find that it was merely a dream, and now that it has fled, the
real and genuine life of the spirit, of the soul, can begin. In a
shimmeringly brilliant way, VN tells a very similar tale. But where Tolstoy
is guided by a stolid yet unorthodox faith, Nabokov champions a faith in the
human spirit and the magic of the individual soul, which may very well be
the same thing.
... and so to bed.
Andrew Brown
On 10/8/06 12:46 PM, "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
> Dear Andrew,
>
> For one thing, I think by the time he wrote PF, VN knew that he was an artist
> of an entirely higher order than RLS.
>
> Do you have any evidence that he changed his mind? I don't think this has to
> do with who is the higher order of artist, but we know that VN was both fond
> of RLS and had a higher opinion of the story of J&H than you do.
>
> One¹s muse can be angelic, and one¹s muse can be demonic.
>
> The versipel is not just any demon, it is a changeling. Do you really think
> that VN chose this very odd word - - which doesn't even exist in most
> dictionaries - - because he needed a three syllable word meaning "demon"? He
> could have chosen from such words as Azazel, Ahriman, Mephisto, Apollyon,
> incubus, succubus, diablotin, poltergeist, devilkin, erlkönig, hobgoblin etc.
> Just a few from my Thesaurus. It seems to me that erlkönig would suit your
> interpretation very well and has the added value of having been referred to in
> the poem.
>
> So why "versipel"? Why is Shade's muse a changeling?
>
> Carolyn
>
>
>
>
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