Charles Kinbote's "Foreword" received its last
touches on the day Kinbote committed suicide ( as stated in SO, in the
1966 interview with A.Apple Jr., Everyman's page 72)
Appel's question
ends with: " Is it only a coincidence that Kinbote's "Forword"
to Pale Fire is dated "Oct.19," which is the date of Swift's
death?"
What are the implications of Appel's choice of
this particular spelling: "Forword"? It was inserted inside quotation-marks
and later, republished and edited by VN ( who might have maintained a
mispelling or kept the allusion intact).
( I remember a similar issue inadvertently arising
in Matthew Roth's messages to the list, 2006, which some other
participant reiterated later on).
Everyman's Library and LoA editions of
"Pale Fire" use the word "Foreword" following "Pale Fire, a poem in four
cantos", "Commentary" and "Index" ( listed under "Contents" of
Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire").
Everyman's Library edition also offers, beside the
"Contents", an "Introduction", "Select Bibliography", "Chronology", A
dedication "To Véra", an epigraph ( James Boswell).
A writer may write an "Introduction" or, perhaps, a
"Foreword" but, never, a "Preface" to another writer's work, as I used to
understand.
Dictionary-help may be misleading.
In a Webster's Portuguese/English/Portuguese
dictionary the word "preface" is accompanied by: preamble, prologue,
introduction, foreword. In a Merriam-Webster
collegiate dictionary "preface" it becomes: "the introductory remarks
of a speaker or writer".
Fowler's carries two entries: Preface/Foreword and
Preface/Prefix. We find that "preface" (by the author) is the traditional
word. Modern books may carry a Foreword ( written by an authoratitative or
distinguished person), sometimes followed by the author's Preface.
COD also makes the same distinction ( in the entry
"Foreword"; under "Preface" this issue is not kept as clear.)
Kinbote is very precise when he emphasises his
choice of a "Foreword". It was not his intention to write a
"Preface".
What is the meaning of Appel's use of
"Forword"?
Jansy
[ Nabokov doesn't contradict him when Appel asks:
"The Doppelgänger motif figures prominently throughout
your fiction; in Pale Fire one is tempted to call it a
Tripling ( at least)..." Nevertheless VN observes that "The
Doppelgänger subject is a frightful bore" and, later
on, in the same "murky" context, he adds: "Philosophically, I am
an indivisible monist"]