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Fwd: How I read _Pale Fire_
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I'm rejoining the list to get this off my chest. If you've seen all this
from Nabokov scholars, then either you're not seeing it now because Prof.
Johnson decided not to forward it, or I apologize and would be grateful to
know where to find it.
To me, this is *the* interpretation of _Pale Fire_, but it follows so many
others that I'm going to write it personally rather than as if it were
objective fact.
The first time I read _Pale Fire_, I enjoyed the poem. I'll restate its
theme: Shade's hope for his daughter's survival is justified by
connections such as white mountains and white fountains, betraying the
presence of powers above the stage who are required, as Kinbote points
out, for an afterlife. I enjoyed how this theme itself connected with the
play of links and bobolinks throughout the novel. (Though I didn't notice
many of them till later, often after reading secondary sources.)
Meanwhile I saw through many of Kinbote's pretenses, as I imagine most
readers do. I inferred, perhaps wrongly, that he was homosexual, that he
was King Charles, that he was insane and Charles and all of Zembla were
his delusions, that he was Botkin. Little clues revealed these things.
On rereadings, I found little clues suggesting that Kinbote was unreliable
even about non-Zemblan material. The first was the date palm on the
Shakespeare avenue, which I've mentioned here before. It couldn't grow in
the cold New Wye winters that Kinbote is at pains to complain about. (If
it grew in its own greenhouse, he would have passed up a description of
the distorted reflections in the panes, which I could hardly believe.)
The second was Kinbote's volume of _Timon of Athens_ in Zemblan
translation. If he invented Zembla, then the volume couldnt exist--but
he seems to have it in front of him. Also there are temporal
discrepancies that I mentioned in a chronology here about two years ago.
For instance, the years of Kinbote's and Shade's births disagree by a year
with the difference in their ages and with Shade's age when his father
died. Then there were the obvious transformations of Gordon's garment, in
Switzerland not Zembla.
I decided that nothing Kinbote said was reliable, and that this could
explain much, such as the strange mixture of real places (Paris, New York,
Washington) with unreal ones (Appalachia, Utana, Idoming)--quite different
from the recognizable world of _Pnin_ and _Lolita_, the invented country
of _Invitation to a Beheading_, and the built-up alternate history of
_Ada_. Failing to even imagine the Shadean and Kinbotean interpretations
and many others, I toyed with the idea that the whole story was crazy K's
invention based on what he had in Cedarn: the list of trees mentioned in
Shakespeare and the volume of _Timon_.
But I concluded that doubting Kinbote was the ultimate, culminating
undeception. It's only fiction. The characters exited and the set was
whisked up to the flies--not explicitly as in _Invitation to a Beheading_,
but by a process the author engineered in the reader's mind, a method that
I found more elegant.
Some may object that the ending "It was all a dream" is boring and
puerile. One short answer is that Nabokov doesnt seem to have minded it
in the Alice books (unless he said something about it that I dont know,
which is entirely possible).
My long answer is that this vanishing and awakening was central to the
novel. The irony of Shades beliefs is that they are true. His darling
*is* alive: a Red Admiral (thank you, Brian Boyd). And all the
connections and coincidences *are* the work of a higher power: Nabokov.
This is the same realization as that the characters and settings dont
really exist, that the book is fiction.
But our lives are also full of connections and coincidences. One
mentioned in the book stands out for me: the cow-crow-crown
correspondence. All the accidental similarities that foster
wordplay--laundry and launde--are also examples. If we look outside the
book, we find far more, and we find that they interested Nabokov. I
concluded that as Nabokov wants us to infer from the coincidences in the
novel that it's only fiction by an author, he wants us to infer from real
coincidences that reality is "only" the creation of an Author. Thus that
when it dissolves on our deaths, it can reveal a higher reality with
beings akin to us. I think that when Nabokov has us "see through" Zembla
and then New Wye, he is pointing to his most sacred subject, the Beyond.
An advantage of this interpretation is that it can subsume all the other
ones. (From a Popperian philosophy-of-science viewpoint, that's a
disadvantage, as the interpretation is hard to falsify. Please take that
remark as a challenge.) Ghosts, Jekyll and Hyde, Scandinavian literature,
a single narrator, literary parasitismall can figure in what chess
problemists call the "play" and fade away when one finds the "key", which
in my variation is the hope of being promoted by the composer.
Another advantage is that Nabokov's interwoven texture not only matches
Shade's theme, but makes Nabokov's point. By the way, I haven't noticed
this thematic use of the texture in any of his other writings that I've
read. If I had to look for it, though, I'd start in _Speak, Memory_.
I'll finish by citing two authors who strongly influenced my reading of
_Pale Fire_ and whom I've enjoyed greatly and returned to equally often.
They are the authors of the two books that I see as reflecting _Pale Fire_
as Nodo reflects Odon (or vice-versa). Douglas Hofstadter said _Gödel,
Escher, Bach is about his religion; it's the religion I've ascribed to
Nabokov, presented in somewhat similar ways. And J. R. R. Tolkien, maker
in earnest of phony languages and hairsbreadth escapes in _The Lord of the
Rings_, presented in "On Fairy-Stories" the idea of the author's sacred
task as sub-creator in the image of the Creator. Maybe it's my misfortune
that I think these ideas make for better books than beliefs.
I'd appreciate any comments anyone has.
Jerry Friedman
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
----- End forwarded message -----
from Nabokov scholars, then either you're not seeing it now because Prof.
Johnson decided not to forward it, or I apologize and would be grateful to
know where to find it.
To me, this is *the* interpretation of _Pale Fire_, but it follows so many
others that I'm going to write it personally rather than as if it were
objective fact.
The first time I read _Pale Fire_, I enjoyed the poem. I'll restate its
theme: Shade's hope for his daughter's survival is justified by
connections such as white mountains and white fountains, betraying the
presence of powers above the stage who are required, as Kinbote points
out, for an afterlife. I enjoyed how this theme itself connected with the
play of links and bobolinks throughout the novel. (Though I didn't notice
many of them till later, often after reading secondary sources.)
Meanwhile I saw through many of Kinbote's pretenses, as I imagine most
readers do. I inferred, perhaps wrongly, that he was homosexual, that he
was King Charles, that he was insane and Charles and all of Zembla were
his delusions, that he was Botkin. Little clues revealed these things.
On rereadings, I found little clues suggesting that Kinbote was unreliable
even about non-Zemblan material. The first was the date palm on the
Shakespeare avenue, which I've mentioned here before. It couldn't grow in
the cold New Wye winters that Kinbote is at pains to complain about. (If
it grew in its own greenhouse, he would have passed up a description of
the distorted reflections in the panes, which I could hardly believe.)
The second was Kinbote's volume of _Timon of Athens_ in Zemblan
translation. If he invented Zembla, then the volume couldnt exist--but
he seems to have it in front of him. Also there are temporal
discrepancies that I mentioned in a chronology here about two years ago.
For instance, the years of Kinbote's and Shade's births disagree by a year
with the difference in their ages and with Shade's age when his father
died. Then there were the obvious transformations of Gordon's garment, in
Switzerland not Zembla.
I decided that nothing Kinbote said was reliable, and that this could
explain much, such as the strange mixture of real places (Paris, New York,
Washington) with unreal ones (Appalachia, Utana, Idoming)--quite different
from the recognizable world of _Pnin_ and _Lolita_, the invented country
of _Invitation to a Beheading_, and the built-up alternate history of
_Ada_. Failing to even imagine the Shadean and Kinbotean interpretations
and many others, I toyed with the idea that the whole story was crazy K's
invention based on what he had in Cedarn: the list of trees mentioned in
Shakespeare and the volume of _Timon_.
But I concluded that doubting Kinbote was the ultimate, culminating
undeception. It's only fiction. The characters exited and the set was
whisked up to the flies--not explicitly as in _Invitation to a Beheading_,
but by a process the author engineered in the reader's mind, a method that
I found more elegant.
Some may object that the ending "It was all a dream" is boring and
puerile. One short answer is that Nabokov doesnt seem to have minded it
in the Alice books (unless he said something about it that I dont know,
which is entirely possible).
My long answer is that this vanishing and awakening was central to the
novel. The irony of Shades beliefs is that they are true. His darling
*is* alive: a Red Admiral (thank you, Brian Boyd). And all the
connections and coincidences *are* the work of a higher power: Nabokov.
This is the same realization as that the characters and settings dont
really exist, that the book is fiction.
But our lives are also full of connections and coincidences. One
mentioned in the book stands out for me: the cow-crow-crown
correspondence. All the accidental similarities that foster
wordplay--laundry and launde--are also examples. If we look outside the
book, we find far more, and we find that they interested Nabokov. I
concluded that as Nabokov wants us to infer from the coincidences in the
novel that it's only fiction by an author, he wants us to infer from real
coincidences that reality is "only" the creation of an Author. Thus that
when it dissolves on our deaths, it can reveal a higher reality with
beings akin to us. I think that when Nabokov has us "see through" Zembla
and then New Wye, he is pointing to his most sacred subject, the Beyond.
An advantage of this interpretation is that it can subsume all the other
ones. (From a Popperian philosophy-of-science viewpoint, that's a
disadvantage, as the interpretation is hard to falsify. Please take that
remark as a challenge.) Ghosts, Jekyll and Hyde, Scandinavian literature,
a single narrator, literary parasitismall can figure in what chess
problemists call the "play" and fade away when one finds the "key", which
in my variation is the hope of being promoted by the composer.
Another advantage is that Nabokov's interwoven texture not only matches
Shade's theme, but makes Nabokov's point. By the way, I haven't noticed
this thematic use of the texture in any of his other writings that I've
read. If I had to look for it, though, I'd start in _Speak, Memory_.
I'll finish by citing two authors who strongly influenced my reading of
_Pale Fire_ and whom I've enjoyed greatly and returned to equally often.
They are the authors of the two books that I see as reflecting _Pale Fire_
as Nodo reflects Odon (or vice-versa). Douglas Hofstadter said _Gödel,
Escher, Bach is about his religion; it's the religion I've ascribed to
Nabokov, presented in somewhat similar ways. And J. R. R. Tolkien, maker
in earnest of phony languages and hairsbreadth escapes in _The Lord of the
Rings_, presented in "On Fairy-Stories" the idea of the author's sacred
task as sub-creator in the image of the Creator. Maybe it's my misfortune
that I think these ideas make for better books than beliefs.
I'd appreciate any comments anyone has.
Jerry Friedman
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
----- End forwarded message -----