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Sergei's response to MR
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Dear Matthew,
it is not very difficult to answer your questions from the point of view
of the theory I favor – that Kinbote and Shade are two different persons.
>I have a sincere (truly!) question or two for those who see Shade and
>Kinbote as separate people within the real world of New Wye.
>1. What do you think about those portions of the text which seem to
>unite Kinbote and Shade's narratives?
Kinbote, if he is a separate person, and outlives Shade, has time to
“fusion” his own story and the story of Shade, and modify his Zembla
fantasy accordingly. One of the themes is – how defenseless is art after
the death of the creator?
>Four examples: Shade's "not text, but
>texture" epiphany, which seems a better description of VN's PF than
>Shade's
>poem alone;
At the moment, I don’t have with me the English text, and I would like
to look at this place again. I hope to develop my arguments concerning
this example later. But I think that Kinbote, even as a different person,
is not completely opposed to Shade. There are “flashes” of poetry and
art in his
narration as well. Also, as I argue, Kinbote had a lot of time to develop
what he got after Shade’s death.
>the coincidence of the black boy pushing the clockwork
>wheelbarrow and the black gardener (we learn from Kinbote) pushing the
>wheelbarrow just before Shade's death;
Nabokov was very much interested in the relationship between art and
reality. Several times he expressed the opinion that it is art that
influences and shapes the reality, sometimes in very curious way.
I don’t have all the texts with me, but best of all I remember his
remark that the plot of the famous theatric play by Gogol, “Revizor”
(The Inspector-General), acclaimed as a realistic “mirror” of Russian
life by revolutionary critics, in fact was realized (much later)
in a very ironic way in the life of Chernyshevsky, a critic himself. One
of revolutionaries (Lopatin) who wanted to help
him to escape from the exile, was himself taken for an Inspector-General
traveling in disguise, and because of this the scheme failed. It is
probably mentioned in the chapter of “The Gift” about Chernyshevsky,
and/or in the essay about Gogol. There are many other cases of strange
coincidences in poetry, I think they much interested Nabokov. I wrote once
an essay about the logics of prophecy and know many such cases myself.
So, probably Nabokov just wanted to stress that the poem of Shade belongs
to the realm of true poetry, in particular contains such coincidences and
prophecies.
>"Man's life as commentary to
>abstruse / Unfinished poem";
Only ONE man’s life? It is “universal” Man in the poem.
>Zembla's appearance (via Pope, we assume)
>in Shade's poem and Kinbote's Zembla fantasy.
I don’t assume that Zembla’s appearance is only via Pope. It might be
so for Shade – as a separate person, and it might be derived, at least,
partly, from a “vulgar” romance of Zenda – for Kinbote.
(Cf. the Boyd/Hornick discussion and some of my postings.) By the way,
since we assume that Kinbote had many discussions with Shade, and had time
to develop, modify, “edit” his Zembla story after Shade’s death, he
could
very well absorb all this, add new retouches, strengthen links with Pope...
>Are these all just
>incredible
>coincidences?
I don’t think so.
>Dramatic irony? VN, outside the real world of the novel,
>dropping meta clues?
Probably. By the way, is it one of his meta clues – Wordsmith and
Goldsworth / Goldsmith and Wordsworth. Who is the author of these,
probably, invented names, in the PF?
>2. One compelling argument by nonintegrationists is that when we
>collapse
>Kinbote and Shade's characters into one, we lose our enjoyment of the
>interplay b/w Kinbote and Shade. That being so, do nonintegrationists
>also
>find all the scenes with (imaginary)Gradus--many of which are very
>detailed
>and action-oriented--unsatisfying? Less satisfying?
There is no reason to push the cohould we think that ALL the “named persons” are
separate
entities? Say that Gradus must be different from Jack Gray etc.
In literary text we sometimes can appreciate the quality of single
sentences out of context, but more often their value very much depends on
the whole. It could be that only some final touch gives them the full
value. I think that in case with Gradus it is his “materialization” in
the form of Jack Gray. They are a bit like a particule and antiparticule
that
cancel each other in a flash of light. In this particular line the main
source of dramatic tension is the interaction between imaginary and real.
(By the way, it is one of the main sources of dramatic tension in the
whole construction of the PF.) When (being a “nonintegrationist”) you
read the
story, in the first reading you find the line of Gradus amusing, in
particular, because there are much very precise details in his behavior as
a “soviet-style” agent. Afterwards it is rather dramatic tension
between real and imaginary (Gradus as an emanation of Kinbote versus Jack
Gray.) Psychologically, it has much to do with WSOD (willing suspension of
disbelief, already mentioned at this List).
Note that in the Kinbote’s narrative the Gradus’progress follows the
“normal” direction of time. If you think about Kinbote writing the
comments
after the death of Shade, it has to be the inverse direction. If he sees
the killer the first time at the moment of murder (except, maybe, the
photographs at Goldsworth’s house), then the whole story of Gradus is
invented afterwards. Kinbote has very strong motivation: if the assassin
wanted to kill him, he is the king. He has to invent Gradus backwards,
from
the moment of murder.
Notice that the claim of Kinbote that he could obtain one or even two
meetings with “John Gray” after his arrest seems completely false. How
could it be possible? In what quality? To have rendez-vous without
witnesses, where he could learn everything he wanted, and persuade him
that he (Kinbote) can help him during the process, in exchange for the
confession (that Jack Gray was Gradus)? He is not a lawyer. So, it looks
as a good proof that Kinbote is lying. Moreover, he is lying in a way that
Shade, who grew in America, would never imagine even if he would gone
completely crazy, because the idea that some accidental witness
(Kinbote’s role from legal point of view) could have such meetings with
the murderer is just stupid. A Russian emigrant who came to America
recently, may not understand that, it is consistent with the conjecture
that Kinbote and Shade are two different persons, and Kinbote spend most
of his life running from Russia.
The Gradus story is full of subtle details that a Russian emigrant, who
spend most of his life in Europe, before coming to the USA, might know.
These details concern, for example, soviet agents. A lot of stories
circulated among emigrants, some flashing at the front pages of French or
German newspapers, sometimes it became known that this or that person
turned out to be an agent, it was possible to see people working at soviet
embassy, with many minute details of their behavior (the kind of costumes
they had, their way of spending, facial expressions etc.)
It is difficult to understand, why a person like Shade who spent most of
his life in New Wye (or even some suppressed part of his personality)
would be interested in such details at all, and how he would know them. To
the contrary, it is quite natural that Botkine turning Kinbote would know
them and use in his delusional stories.
By the way, concerning the possibility of russian mother of Shade, this
conjecture would explain very little. This is a plain fact of life of
Russian emigrants that the parents have great difficulties to pass even
basic elements of Russian culture to their children, not to speak about
the experience acquired as adult. If Shade was born in 1898, then the
experience that his mother “Lukin” could haverevolution,
and so, this “Russianness” cannot be a source of specific emigrant
experience accumulated by Kinbote.
Best regards,
Sergei Soloviev
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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it is not very difficult to answer your questions from the point of view
of the theory I favor – that Kinbote and Shade are two different persons.
>I have a sincere (truly!) question or two for those who see Shade and
>Kinbote as separate people within the real world of New Wye.
>1. What do you think about those portions of the text which seem to
>unite Kinbote and Shade's narratives?
Kinbote, if he is a separate person, and outlives Shade, has time to
“fusion” his own story and the story of Shade, and modify his Zembla
fantasy accordingly. One of the themes is – how defenseless is art after
the death of the creator?
>Four examples: Shade's "not text, but
>texture" epiphany, which seems a better description of VN's PF than
>Shade's
>poem alone;
At the moment, I don’t have with me the English text, and I would like
to look at this place again. I hope to develop my arguments concerning
this example later. But I think that Kinbote, even as a different person,
is not completely opposed to Shade. There are “flashes” of poetry and
art in his
narration as well. Also, as I argue, Kinbote had a lot of time to develop
what he got after Shade’s death.
>the coincidence of the black boy pushing the clockwork
>wheelbarrow and the black gardener (we learn from Kinbote) pushing the
>wheelbarrow just before Shade's death;
Nabokov was very much interested in the relationship between art and
reality. Several times he expressed the opinion that it is art that
influences and shapes the reality, sometimes in very curious way.
I don’t have all the texts with me, but best of all I remember his
remark that the plot of the famous theatric play by Gogol, “Revizor”
(The Inspector-General), acclaimed as a realistic “mirror” of Russian
life by revolutionary critics, in fact was realized (much later)
in a very ironic way in the life of Chernyshevsky, a critic himself. One
of revolutionaries (Lopatin) who wanted to help
him to escape from the exile, was himself taken for an Inspector-General
traveling in disguise, and because of this the scheme failed. It is
probably mentioned in the chapter of “The Gift” about Chernyshevsky,
and/or in the essay about Gogol. There are many other cases of strange
coincidences in poetry, I think they much interested Nabokov. I wrote once
an essay about the logics of prophecy and know many such cases myself.
So, probably Nabokov just wanted to stress that the poem of Shade belongs
to the realm of true poetry, in particular contains such coincidences and
prophecies.
>"Man's life as commentary to
>abstruse / Unfinished poem";
Only ONE man’s life? It is “universal” Man in the poem.
>Zembla's appearance (via Pope, we assume)
>in Shade's poem and Kinbote's Zembla fantasy.
I don’t assume that Zembla’s appearance is only via Pope. It might be
so for Shade – as a separate person, and it might be derived, at least,
partly, from a “vulgar” romance of Zenda – for Kinbote.
(Cf. the Boyd/Hornick discussion and some of my postings.) By the way,
since we assume that Kinbote had many discussions with Shade, and had time
to develop, modify, “edit” his Zembla story after Shade’s death, he
could
very well absorb all this, add new retouches, strengthen links with Pope...
>Are these all just
>incredible
>coincidences?
I don’t think so.
>Dramatic irony? VN, outside the real world of the novel,
>dropping meta clues?
Probably. By the way, is it one of his meta clues – Wordsmith and
Goldsworth / Goldsmith and Wordsworth. Who is the author of these,
probably, invented names, in the PF?
>2. One compelling argument by nonintegrationists is that when we
>collapse
>Kinbote and Shade's characters into one, we lose our enjoyment of the
>interplay b/w Kinbote and Shade. That being so, do nonintegrationists
>also
>find all the scenes with (imaginary)Gradus--many of which are very
>detailed
>and action-oriented--unsatisfying? Less satisfying?
There is no reason to push the cohould we think that ALL the “named persons” are
separate
entities? Say that Gradus must be different from Jack Gray etc.
In literary text we sometimes can appreciate the quality of single
sentences out of context, but more often their value very much depends on
the whole. It could be that only some final touch gives them the full
value. I think that in case with Gradus it is his “materialization” in
the form of Jack Gray. They are a bit like a particule and antiparticule
that
cancel each other in a flash of light. In this particular line the main
source of dramatic tension is the interaction between imaginary and real.
(By the way, it is one of the main sources of dramatic tension in the
whole construction of the PF.) When (being a “nonintegrationist”) you
read the
story, in the first reading you find the line of Gradus amusing, in
particular, because there are much very precise details in his behavior as
a “soviet-style” agent. Afterwards it is rather dramatic tension
between real and imaginary (Gradus as an emanation of Kinbote versus Jack
Gray.) Psychologically, it has much to do with WSOD (willing suspension of
disbelief, already mentioned at this List).
Note that in the Kinbote’s narrative the Gradus’progress follows the
“normal” direction of time. If you think about Kinbote writing the
comments
after the death of Shade, it has to be the inverse direction. If he sees
the killer the first time at the moment of murder (except, maybe, the
photographs at Goldsworth’s house), then the whole story of Gradus is
invented afterwards. Kinbote has very strong motivation: if the assassin
wanted to kill him, he is the king. He has to invent Gradus backwards,
from
the moment of murder.
Notice that the claim of Kinbote that he could obtain one or even two
meetings with “John Gray” after his arrest seems completely false. How
could it be possible? In what quality? To have rendez-vous without
witnesses, where he could learn everything he wanted, and persuade him
that he (Kinbote) can help him during the process, in exchange for the
confession (that Jack Gray was Gradus)? He is not a lawyer. So, it looks
as a good proof that Kinbote is lying. Moreover, he is lying in a way that
Shade, who grew in America, would never imagine even if he would gone
completely crazy, because the idea that some accidental witness
(Kinbote’s role from legal point of view) could have such meetings with
the murderer is just stupid. A Russian emigrant who came to America
recently, may not understand that, it is consistent with the conjecture
that Kinbote and Shade are two different persons, and Kinbote spend most
of his life running from Russia.
The Gradus story is full of subtle details that a Russian emigrant, who
spend most of his life in Europe, before coming to the USA, might know.
These details concern, for example, soviet agents. A lot of stories
circulated among emigrants, some flashing at the front pages of French or
German newspapers, sometimes it became known that this or that person
turned out to be an agent, it was possible to see people working at soviet
embassy, with many minute details of their behavior (the kind of costumes
they had, their way of spending, facial expressions etc.)
It is difficult to understand, why a person like Shade who spent most of
his life in New Wye (or even some suppressed part of his personality)
would be interested in such details at all, and how he would know them. To
the contrary, it is quite natural that Botkine turning Kinbote would know
them and use in his delusional stories.
By the way, concerning the possibility of russian mother of Shade, this
conjecture would explain very little. This is a plain fact of life of
Russian emigrants that the parents have great difficulties to pass even
basic elements of Russian culture to their children, not to speak about
the experience acquired as adult. If Shade was born in 1898, then the
experience that his mother “Lukin” could haverevolution,
and so, this “Russianness” cannot be a source of specific emigrant
experience accumulated by Kinbote.
Best regards,
Sergei Soloviev
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