Sergei
Soloviev remarked " first of all, I think it would be useful
if in our discussion we would more clearly distinguish (as the mathematicians
do) the "metatheory" and the "theory". The "metatheory" in this case being our
reconstruction of the ideas and intentions and sources of Nabokov, and the
"theory" - the analysis of the PF as if it were a description of real world,some
of the personages were real persons, with possible (impossible) medical
conditions, delusions etc."
Quite!
SB's remark calls our attention to the risks of using,
indiscrimintately, "theory" and "meta-theory" or following an
Escherian or Borgian twist ( among his "dictionary" ennumeration of
mammals Borges included the pencil that drew a camel ) while
discussing "Pale Fire". And yet, after V. Alexander wrote about
"multi-vocal" works I was reminded of an old posting on Bakhtin and
dialogism where this issue was raised concerning Nabokov's "voices".
Could she, or Stephen elaborate on that?
Unfortunately I could not find the work in which Borges included
his "dictionary", but I came across another "Inquisition" that
might be of interest to the List and that is linked to Shade's brown shoe lying
in the lawn after his dream about a stroll in the garden ( and, to
Kinbote's Cedarn Caves by devious ways).
After Borges wrote about "The Flower of Coleridge" he
mentioned its sequel in two other works: H.Well's "The Time
Machine" and Henry James' "The Sense of the Past" (
following Borges's second-hand description the latter deals with a
painting and its painter in a way that has a torsion similar to VN's
in "La Veneziana" ). Borges follows a pantheistic argument
about the fundamental unity of the "Word" according to which "the plurality
of authors is an illusion".
I only have Borges quote of Coleridge in Spanish and a rough treacherous
rendering reads: " If after man in his dream reached Paradise and was
given a flower as proof of his visit, and when he wakes up and
finds himself holding this flower in his hand...what then?" ( "Otras
Inquisitiones", Alianza Editorial,1997,page 20)
Thanks to "Google" I reached the following information: "At the end of
the eighteenth century, Samuel Coleridge posed the fanciful question that Borges
reminds us of 200 years later: "If a man could pass through Paradise and have a
flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if
he found that flower in his hand when he awoke-Ay!-and what then?" H. G.
Wells quoted Coleridge in the epigraph to his novel The Time Machine in the year
that Wanamaker's was building its New York store, and Wells gave his time
traveller, far in the future, precisely the flower postulated by Coleridge: he
has it still in his hand when he recovers consciousness after crash-landing in
the present at the end of the novel. What would Coleridge's flower have been? We
recall that Coleridge had himself already experienced a dream such as he
proposed in his fanciful question, a dream induced by opium, in which "Kubla
Khan," his great unfinished poem, was given to him in its entirety: when he
awoke, he had the whole work of some three hundred lines in his head...".
Well, then... aren't we back now to Kubla Khan and Kinbote's
"cedarn caves" and
"Zembla"?
Jansy