Subject
Re: Sergei against split personalities (response to JF responding
to MR)
to MR)
From
Date
Body
An anonymous contributor mentioned that J.Friedman wrote: "Technically, by the way, I don't believe the Botkin reading is MPD.... we don't see him switch back and forth between B. and K." and, among other issues, he then asked "why would Shade be so unfazed? This has always been a problem with the novel for me, and one more reason I'm drawn to the Shade MPD theory.
As I wrote earlier, we transformed the "multiple personality disorder" into an axiom... If one thinks about all the "matching" & hidden references and correspondences bt. poem and commentary/index and when one accepts that:
(a) an American poet wrote Pale Fire and his unpublished cards were taken over by someone else;
(b) the person who edited and wrote commentaries and the index of the stolen poem invented everything else.
we must suppose that the impostor must have had intimate knowledge about the poet's circle of friends, biographical data, shared his interest in Pope and English poetry and created those correspondences in retrospect in a hidden form, not only as explicitly as present in the commentary. This person might have been a male homosexual psychotic, but probably could have been as sane as Sybil...
If, Shade should he have been a psychotic ( one with Russian ascendants) he might still have been capable of authoring "Pale Fire" ( before the final outcome of their mental-illness - and also after it - T. Tasso, Hölderlin, Artaud, Nietzsche were superior poets and writers. Even President Schreber (an Austrian judge who wrote his "Memoirs") often retained his acumen on several occasions after his last crisis, at 51 ( like Kinbote?) - but it was Freud himself who acted a some kind of "commentator" for Schreber´s memoirs.
In this case, there would be no "external Kinbote" exhibiting observable Kinbotean behavior or living at Judge Goldsmith's house and taking part of academic life in New Wye. It is totally unnecessary to imagine that Shade appeared as Kinbote corporeally and next reverted back to Shade before becoming Kinbote again. Shade's delusions might have only gained expression in a written form, while organizing the commentary and the index and he'd be careful to mix mirrorlike elements in both poem and commentary.
Another conjecture would lead us to imagine it was envious Sybil herself who became mad ( because of the grief she felt or didn't feel for her daughter) . She took possession of her dead husband's poems ( who could have been killed by Jack Grey since Shade resembled the Judge, a "true factual element" ) and then added her own contributions, now under Charles Kinbote. She might even have created his name after inventing a Xavier to add to Shade' s Francis and, having once met a Dr. Botkin, arrived at the name Kinbote. Her husband's knowledge of Alexander Pope filtered through her and inspired her version of Zembla. The hitch, the most obvious one in this improvisation, would be her lack of Russian and Russia's cultural and geographical background. Still, what do we know about Sybil? She even might have been a Russian "dormant" spy ( I ignore the correct expression for that) who broke down after her daughter's and husband's deaths. Or...
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: NABOKV-L
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 6:13 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Sergei against split personalities (response to JF responding to MR)
[EDNOTE. Sergei Soloviev responds here to Jerry Friedman. It is hard to keep track of the multiple voices contributing to this conversation! SES]
I do not know to whom I am really answering, the signature was missing...
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As I wrote earlier, we transformed the "multiple personality disorder" into an axiom... If one thinks about all the "matching" & hidden references and correspondences bt. poem and commentary/index and when one accepts that:
(a) an American poet wrote Pale Fire and his unpublished cards were taken over by someone else;
(b) the person who edited and wrote commentaries and the index of the stolen poem invented everything else.
we must suppose that the impostor must have had intimate knowledge about the poet's circle of friends, biographical data, shared his interest in Pope and English poetry and created those correspondences in retrospect in a hidden form, not only as explicitly as present in the commentary. This person might have been a male homosexual psychotic, but probably could have been as sane as Sybil...
If, Shade should he have been a psychotic ( one with Russian ascendants) he might still have been capable of authoring "Pale Fire" ( before the final outcome of their mental-illness - and also after it - T. Tasso, Hölderlin, Artaud, Nietzsche were superior poets and writers. Even President Schreber (an Austrian judge who wrote his "Memoirs") often retained his acumen on several occasions after his last crisis, at 51 ( like Kinbote?) - but it was Freud himself who acted a some kind of "commentator" for Schreber´s memoirs.
In this case, there would be no "external Kinbote" exhibiting observable Kinbotean behavior or living at Judge Goldsmith's house and taking part of academic life in New Wye. It is totally unnecessary to imagine that Shade appeared as Kinbote corporeally and next reverted back to Shade before becoming Kinbote again. Shade's delusions might have only gained expression in a written form, while organizing the commentary and the index and he'd be careful to mix mirrorlike elements in both poem and commentary.
Another conjecture would lead us to imagine it was envious Sybil herself who became mad ( because of the grief she felt or didn't feel for her daughter) . She took possession of her dead husband's poems ( who could have been killed by Jack Grey since Shade resembled the Judge, a "true factual element" ) and then added her own contributions, now under Charles Kinbote. She might even have created his name after inventing a Xavier to add to Shade' s Francis and, having once met a Dr. Botkin, arrived at the name Kinbote. Her husband's knowledge of Alexander Pope filtered through her and inspired her version of Zembla. The hitch, the most obvious one in this improvisation, would be her lack of Russian and Russia's cultural and geographical background. Still, what do we know about Sybil? She even might have been a Russian "dormant" spy ( I ignore the correct expression for that) who broke down after her daughter's and husband's deaths. Or...
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: NABOKV-L
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 6:13 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Sergei against split personalities (response to JF responding to MR)
[EDNOTE. Sergei Soloviev responds here to Jerry Friedman. It is hard to keep track of the multiple voices contributing to this conversation! SES]
I do not know to whom I am really answering, the signature was missing...
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