In response to Ron
Rosenbaum’s two messages:
First, on the Arion Press
edition and the Gingko edition. Mo Cohen of Gingko was disturbed about the
claim in the booktryst blog copied to Nabokv-L, and asked me if I knew about
the Arion edition. I answered him:
Yes, I knew it, and was
even consulted for it, and for my pains was sent a copy. But the Arion Press
edition of Pale Fire was quite
different from Gingko’s John Shade’s Pale
Fire: a limited edition of novel and poem, without the focus on the poem
that's the distinguishing mark of our edition. The separate booklet of the poem
was on paper, of index-card proportions, and black-ruled, to suggest index
cards, but set in type, not in handwriting, and bound, so that the whole playful
conceit of our edition that the poem has come straight from Shade’s index cards
to the reader, bypassing Kinbote and any other editorial intervention, is
missing. And the focus entirely on the poem in the essays by R.S. Gwynn and me,
supporting and expanding on this conceit, is absent from the essay Andrew Hoyem
wrote to accompany his edition (which mostly references my old interpretation
of Pale Fire, since retracted). So I
don't think any of us, Jean Holabird, you, me, Ron Rosenbaum, is wrong to
single out the Gingko edition as a breakthrough in the perception of the poem.
The Hoyem edition is a gorgeous example of fine-bookmaking for the collectors
who could afford $600, but it does nothing for the perception or evaluation of
the novel, let alone the poem.
I have never read and never expect to read Pale Fire in the Arion edition: it's too
precious-looking to risk defiling by leaving greasy fingerprints on page after page as
one slowly reads through. But we have designed the Gingko edition to be read
and savored, as if we were Shade's first friends and confidantes--or just
admirers of his poetry, and Nabokov's.
I wouldn't have wanted to run with your project if I
hadn't thought it completely new.
Second, on the interpretation of Pale Fire. My essay to appear in the Gingko edition was entirely
focused on the poem, as Shade’s and Nabokov’s. It ignores the Commentary because
the whole point of the Gingko edition is to restore the poem to the attention
it deserves as a poem, as the product of the poet John Shade and of the Nabokov
who created him and his masterpiece. The essay treats the poem seriously,
lovingly, as on a par with Shakespeare in his best poems, in the sonnets. Had
Ron Rosenbaum not been reading my essay only for evidence of the relation it
has to the interpretation of the novel as a whole I advanced in my 1999 book,
he might have noticed this.
The evidence in my book that I suggest points to
Nabokov’s wanting to allow readers to infer the dead Hazel’s role in poem and
commentary comes overwhelmingly from the 90% of Pale Fire signed by Kinbote. The case could certainly not be made
from the evidence of the poem alone. Since in the Gingko project I was working
with poem alone, as if straight from Shade’s hands, the question of Hazel’s
role simply does not arise.
Whether or not Nabokov wanted to suggest that Hazel
had influenced Shade’s composition of the poem, and in order to do that, had
prompted Kinbote’s Zembla fantasy and his insistently importuning Shade to immortalize
Charles the Beloved in his verse, he wanted Shade to be taken seriously as a
poet. Even if Hazel was able to influence live people after her death, she
would not have sought to inspire, say, her mother to write a poem with her
suicide at its center. She could only influence to write a poem someone whose
mind was a poet’s.
In a similar way, Nabokov suggests, has Fyodor suggest, that Fyodor may be
influenced by the spirit of his father, and the spirit of Pushkin, both in
writing his aborted biography of his father, and in writing The Gift itself. Fyodor does not see these
as any diminution of his artistry or responsibility.
And Nabokov also wrote to his mother that he thought,
after his Cambridge exams, that his dead father had somehow inspired him in
writing those exams. I think he implies, in the shape of The Gift and elsewhere, a sense that his own work comes from
regions beyond, where his dead father and dead Pushkin somehow live on, as he
implies, in Pale Fire, a sense that
his own work comes from regions beyond where his dead parents and dead
Shakespeare somehow live on. He also knows how much hard labor, how much
research and painstaking revision, he put into these and other compositions, how
much responsibility he has for every creative decision. If his work does put
him in touch with, even allow him to channel, mysteries beyond, they remain
mysteries, and his work remains his, just as within the fictive world he
inhabits, John Shade’s poem remains his, whatever else Nabokov may or may not
imply lies behind it.
Brian Boyd
On 5/08/2010, at 8:23 AM, Nabokv-L wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Dear List members,
I want to thank A. Bouazza for bringing to our attention the sale of
the Arion Press <Pale Fire>.
From the Abe Books website description of what was sold, it is clear
that this is <not> a "stand alone" edition of the poem "Pale
Fore" but rather a two volume edition of the whole novel, something
quite different, in form and purpose from the forthcoming Gingko Press
edition that I wrote about in <Slate>
<http://www.slate.com/id/2261520/>
Here is the Abe Books description from their website describing the
record sale price of what they call "the book" (not "the poem" (I
wonder why the record sale, coming a week or so after my column?):
"Other items of particular note include a Nabokov book that is not
Lolita. Coming in at number five we have his Pale Fire, a fascinating
and unusual novel which takes the form of a 999-line poem, along with
notes, commentary and editorial by a fictional friend of the (also
fictional) poet throughout. This copy was #44 of a 266-copy limited
edition."
While the poem may have occupied the first volume, clearly what is
being described is a "book" of two volumes in which the poem is
embedded. The Gingko Press edition is of the poem alone, purposely
designed so that the poem will be considered separately from the book.
I wonder if the author of the triumphalist post here ("Ron Rosenbaum
was wrong") who made such a issue of the Arion Press being a stand
alone "Pale Fire" will have the grace to concede his error.
I'm somewhat disappointed by the tone the moderators of the list
have allowed, in which I have been accused of "shilling" for Gingko
Press, and described as "strange". Particularly when my own civil
disagreement with Brian Boyd on whether he has "abandoned" (my version)
or merely ignored (his version) his theory of the authorship of "Pale
Fire" (it was somehow dictated by the ghost of John Shade's dead
daughter Hazel Boyd contend in 1999) was not posted. I hope we're not
protecting favorites here. I merely asked whether any other List
members believed Boyd's theory. I re iterate the question now: does
anyone else believe Hazel Shade's ghost somehow dictated "Pale Fire"?
Ron Rosenbaum
EDNote: the "Triumphalist post" ("Ron Rosenbaum at Slate is Wrong . .
.", July 28) mentioned above was not written by a Nabokv-L subscriber,
but rather copied to the list by Sandy P. Klein from its original
location, a blog at "booktryst.com." The original post is at:
http://www.booktryst.com/2010/07/ron-rosenbaum-at-slate-is-wrong-about.html
The unpleasant tone, which RR is correct to note would not be allowed
in direct comments by list subscribers about other subscribers, was
part of that off-list post, reproduced here for documentary purposes.
As for the missing RR post (July 24)--my apologies: I did not suppress
it intentionally; an email glitch caused it to escape my notice and so
I failed to forward it. I'm pasting it in below, in hopes that it will
still spark some interest and response.
Please be aware that our policy is never to suppress a
subscriber-authored post without communicating about it with the
contributor. If a post is merely a reproduction of other web content,
sometimes we do silently suppress. Feel free to contact us if ever your
posts don't appear; glitches occur regularly, and our in-boxes can be
hectic places. Thanks for your patience.
~SB
---
As an admirer of Brian Boyd, I must say I am entertained by his
fancy footwork in his recent communication to the list about his theory
of the authorship of the poem "Pale Fire" in the novel <Pale
Fire>.
After writing an entire book centered on the conjecture that the
poem was not written by ostensible author John Shade (<Nabokov's
Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery> Princeton University
Press, 1999) but by the ghost of Shade's dead daughter Hazel, he now
writes a 30 page essay for the forthcoming stand-alone edition of the
poem, in which he fails to mention this daring but far-fetched theory.
I do not say he "repudiates" his theory in my <Slate> essay, I
just wonder why what was once a central issue to him (and all readers
of what we both agreee is probably Nabokov's greatest work) is absent
now. What happened to Hazel's shade?
Indeed throughout his essay he refers to "Shade's ideas" and tells
us that inthe poem "Shade expresses these realizations lucidly" (both
on p. 8).
Mr. Boyd tells us: "Rosenbaum is wrong to imagine my essay
repudiates my Pale Fire book. It just looks at a different flank of the
elephant, a different point of the starfish".
Is he then, elephant and starfish aside, still willing to assert
that he believes the poem "Pale Fire" was meant by VN to be taken as
written by the ghost of John Shade's dead daughter? I think this is an
important question for the foremost Nabokov biographer to help us clear
up.
And I'd be interested to see if anyone else on the list subscribes to
this theory of the poem's authorship.
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.