Subject
Pale Fire (fwd)
Date
Body
I must confess the recent exchanges on the primacy of Kinbote or
Shade have left me wondering whether I had indeed read _Pale Fire_ by
Vladimir Nabokov, or a book bearing the same title by someone else of
the same name. There are links between poem and commentary to do with
mutability, and so forth (and so on), but the two texts seem to march
in such different directions, making Kinbote's attempts at adapting
the text to his own peculiar notions seem more and more fantastic
(surely part of N.'s design?), that the notion of Shade inventing
both commentator and commentary for his own obscure purposes appears
as bizarre a reading of the novel as any of Kinbote's ("Kinbote's"?)
readings of the poem. But now I must stop as I am getting dizzy.
Best,
Wayne Daniels
Metro Toronto Reference Library
wdaniels@gwmail.mtrl.toronto.on.ca
Shade have left me wondering whether I had indeed read _Pale Fire_ by
Vladimir Nabokov, or a book bearing the same title by someone else of
the same name. There are links between poem and commentary to do with
mutability, and so forth (and so on), but the two texts seem to march
in such different directions, making Kinbote's attempts at adapting
the text to his own peculiar notions seem more and more fantastic
(surely part of N.'s design?), that the notion of Shade inventing
both commentator and commentary for his own obscure purposes appears
as bizarre a reading of the novel as any of Kinbote's ("Kinbote's"?)
readings of the poem. But now I must stop as I am getting dizzy.
Best,
Wayne Daniels
Metro Toronto Reference Library
wdaniels@gwmail.mtrl.toronto.on.ca