J.F toJ.A.: when you spoke of
homosexuality meant to be symbolic of narcissism (as you said incest was), did
you mean Kinbote, or the homosexuality scene in /Ada/?[...]
J.A.to
J.F: I did in fact mean Kinbote when I spoke of Homosexuality and had
momentarily forgotten about Ada, with Van's "trying" the boy prostitute with
dysentary at that floramor and the half-sister's constant
whatsiz.
JM to J.A:Any
modern ( not so modern, actually) text about psychology with whiffs of Freud
connects a special kind of "narcisism" and "homosexuality" ( analogies,mirrors,
reflective surfaces, incapacity to love except one's likeness etc). There is no
"symbolism" or "symbolic reading", as I see it ( Yeah...define love, define
metaphor, define symbol etc...) .
J.A to JM.: I disagree.
And while I know Nabokov would vociferously disagree with me I think it's almost
impossible not to see the sexuality of Kinbote as pretty much a conceit.
Everything from how Kinbote picks up those boys to what exactly he does with
them is vague, a vagueness Nabokov tries to cover over with bluster. Perhaps I
should have said thematic rather than symbolic, that Kinbote's sexuality is an
extension of the solipsism that fuels the entire contraption of the novel, and
that there is no sensuous expressive reality to Kinbote's attraction to men
(it's not even clear over the course of the novel whether he likes smooth
effeminate little boys with curly lashes--when Nabokov has Kinbote describe
those he likes in close up--or rugged masculine types--the various "tricks" and
affairs which are merely brought up and quickly dispensed with). Because
Kinbote's "condition" is basically dramatized as a giggly joke soaked in
abstract academicality the effect in my opinion is to have the character's
libido simply stand in for solipsism. Personally I think this weakens a book
that is already so much of a stunt in terms of its structure that it doesn't
need a cloudy "Freudian reek" to quote another Nabokov novel at the center of
it, turning the book into a kind of racy word jumble. Lolita also had this
symbolic use of sexuality with the same thematic meaning, but he dramatized all
its implications (there are other structural reasons I think Pale Fire is also a
back-(word) step in Nabokov's development, but I won't go into that
here).
JM: I'm still confused by what you call "symbolic
homosexuality". Are you isolating homosexual practices from homosexuality
proper? Not every homosexual practices homosexual sex, of course, but
this doesn't turn him into a "symbolic homosexual" - unless you
mean literary allusions to solipsism or narcisism. Quoting you:
a "symbolic use of sexuality with the same 'thematic' meaning"
(?).
Kinbote, as a fictional character, sees the
world "homosexually". Besides, he despises women or is
unable to perceive them as such (VN's playfulness with freudian
"reeks" seems to have made Kinbote dream "heterosexual dreams", though, as
if he could have been a caricature of a repressed heterosexual). Perhaps VN's
play with "bl" sounds as in "siblings" comes closer to what you consider
this symbolic dimension. I still cannot see how this terminology can
clarify literary issues, though. You wrote "the solipsism
that fuels the entire contraption of the novel" , referring to Pale
Fire and, perhaps, to Lolita - but Humbert's sexuality is a
pervert's ( not fully unfolded ie immature): HH is solipsistic,
not a homosexual. I prefer to think, as Alfred Appel Jr. has focused in his
"Annotated Lolita", that solipsism ( symbolically and I agree with you here) is
a device used as as a theoretical "self-referentiality", a
mise-en-abîme kind of style with infinite regress as in D.B.Johnsons'
"worlds in regression". Yes, in that sense solipsism "fuels" VN's novels...
Recently I read one of Penelope Fitzgerald's characters ("The Blue
Flower", in which we find her working with nymphic ideals and
very young loves through the poet Novalis) mention: " language speaks
only of itself and leaves out the external world" (distorted by memory, I
didn't yet find the quote) and this made me conjecture if one of
VN's insistent demonstrations is not aimed at exploring such a
"solipsistic" ( if I may say so) aspect of
language...