Dear
Charles
I must confess, I think
your demands concerning the poetic quality of the PF (the poem) seem to me a bit
too dogmatic. While I agree that the question how high is its quality is
important, I do not see why the dependency should be "linear" (higher the
quality – better for the whole novel - and for VN; from your postings I had the
impression that this is your firm belief).
Dear Sergei,
Sadly, I fear I have been giving you
completely the wrong impression. My admiration for VN’s Pale Fire is boundless. To my mind it is a comic masterpiece of
stratospheric dimension. I bought the paperback on a railway station in 1964,
and shook with laughter so violently that the train passengers started staring
at me. Since then I have read it again and again. However, I have a confession.
After scanning the appetizing hors
d’oeuvre, I set about the first course. Pretty soon, a distinct sense of
indigestion began to spoil my repast. After glumly chewing over lines 58-70 I
seriously doubted my ability to last the distance for another 920, and skipped
straight to the Commentary. Within two pages I was totally hooked. This was no
pudding, this was a champagne soufflé. Well into the second half of the C20th,
here was scintillating satire and mordant wit, screamingly funny, and as darkly
sparkling as anything written by Bierce or Beerbohm, West or Waugh, during the
preceding 60 years.
I had no a priori conception of Shade’s
composition, but my reaction to both book and poem seemed to me not unlike that
of others. William Boyd’s 1998 choice of PF as his Daily Telegraph Book of the Century comments “perhaps
most importantly, it is brilliantly and brutally comic”. Pre-empted by Boyd, Auberon Waugh
settled for Lolita, in the same slot, 4 months later, but he also hailed PF’s
“finer writing”, suggesting that VN had overestimated the intelligence of his
audience. Where W.Boyd and A.Waugh strongly disagreed, however was on the nature
of Shade’s cantos. W.Boyd remarked that the poem was “beautiful” and “a
wonderful achievement in its own right”. Waugh, I think with deliberate
brutality, called it “999 lines of gibberish verse”, signalling his vigorous
opposition to Boyd’s verdict on this point. William Boyd’s more recent comment
appears to emphasize yet again how extremely funny the book is, but I believe he
was silent on the cantos. My
further confession is that it was several months before I finally struggled
through them in their entirety.
In one of my own recent posts I
remarked that “the entire discussion of Pale Fire the novel still seems
to me to hinge on the reader’s judgement of the aesthetic quality of Shade’s
verse”, and this post crossed with Matthew Roth’s, where he said almost the same
thing, namely: I also agree with Sergei (I think) who said that this
discussion somewhat misses the point. What is actually important is how the poem's goodness or badness relates
to the novel as a whole. If VN
intended the poem to be good but the poem is bad, the novel is
deeply flawed. The more difficult
question is what happens when we say that VN intended to poem to be a mediocrity. For
me, this interpretation presents great aesthetic problems for the novel, but I
will save them for now. Earlier I had also said: “Shade's poem, and its quality, is obviously an
absolutely crucial and critical feature of VN's book. Perhaps one's whole
understanding of the book hinges on the poetic quality one attaches to the
poem.” (Our discussion goes round
in circles, and my memory is definitely limping these
days.)
I make no “demands” at all
concerning the quality of (the poem). You yourself, Sergei, have also said:
I think
that the opinion that the poem in itself is "weak" and not a good poetry
(forcefully presented at this list) is justified by several really weak and even ridiculous places
in the text. But it could be much
farther form the final version planned by Shade, than Kinbote wants us
to believe! I think Vic Perry also made the good point about the
poem being in itself unfinished. But I do not believe that the “quality” of
Shade’s writing necessarily has any bearing whatsoever on the “quality” of the
novel. I do believe that a well-considered judgement of the quality of the poem
completely determines one’s understanding, and the nature of one's
enjoyment, of the novel.
Opinion is clearly seriously divided about Shade’s abilities as a poet, on the evidence presented by his creator. I was rather puzzled by the EDNote: …. I'm going to request that this discussion (regarding . . . hmmmm: colors, the quality of poetry, the "reality" of fiction and the fiction of "reality") slip through the looking glass and continue there, off list. These topics all seem to me unavoidably central in any consideration of VN as a writer, and I do not understand how they can be shunted off-list, if this forum is to continue as a stimulating debating hall and not solely a dull, if worthy, library.
You also asked: The aim of this posting is not to discuss the poetic quality of the PF, but to ask, what other works containing important parts written in verse and in prose we could compare with PF? And how the quality of verse part (seen as poetry) influenced the quality of the whole?
This reminded me of an assertion by
Robert Graves: "The poet .......... is expected to
present a plain unannotated text of his poems, and no supporting documents or
testimonials whatsoever." Dame Ocupacyon, The Crowning Privilege;
Cassell 1955; p.115.
You also asked me, in
connection with Erasmus Darwin’s mighty opus: What word do you speak
of ? In compliance with (presumed) editorial
wishes, I can no longer utter it, but it is obviously a very great favourite
with Erasmus, and starts with “a”.
A man of the C18th, he applies it almost exclusively to the finny world.
His poem can be found here http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10671/10671
Every good
wish,
Charles