-------- Original Message --------
I'm with you, Andrew, on the idea that Nabokov didn't need to use "real"
cultural materials to fill his world. I hate the tendency, in fact, to
try
to track down every last thing in ANYBODY's fiction to some "real"
source
outside of the imagination.
But of course most of the made-up-looking references in Pale Fire to the
non-Kinbotean, non-Shadean world have turned out, thanks to people
following
up on their surmises, to have actually existed - a stunning amount,
actually, from the briefs ad in Life to the case of the backwards
footprints
(Kinbote doubts that one) to the headline on Chapman's homer, and
more...
You yourself seem certain that the "jovial Negro raising his trumpet" is
Louis Armstrong despite his not being named.
I don't have anything invested in the idea that I'm right about the
French
movie; the description makes me think of Greta Garbo too (another real
world
surmise of yours, incidentally). I'm guessing there's a specific movie
behind "Remorse" because of the pattern of the other referents in Pale
Fire.
Anyway, I do want to see "Remorques" now, especially with the
description of
one critic that the waters are the true star of the movie.
By the way - Conmal doesn't resemble Shade by being a "charlatan"
because
Shade isn't one. Nor does "robust and steely hirsute ill looks" exactly
correspond to Kinbote's description of Conmal as "a large sluggish man
with
no passions save poetry." According to Kinbote, Conmal "lived too much
in
his library (...) meditating in a tower of yellow ivory - which was also
John Shade's mistake, in a way."
In answer to jansy - - I'm probably wrong about Conmal's use of
vocabulary,
but I think I'm onto something in the meaning of his sonnet: he is "not
slave", let his critic be a slave (to minor details), to be a scholar of
Shakespeare requires a transcendent mind, not a pedant. This is Kinbote
all
the way - you get the sense that he couldn't possibly imagine that he
can be
the worst sort of pedant himself on a regular basis.