PS: [ to
"My insufficient knowledge of the German
doesn't allow me to offer a translation for Zimmer's text....In German we find (p.416) "Die Recherche meiner Figur
konzentriert sich auf das Problem des Vor- und Nachlebens, das, wie ich sagen
darf, auf schöne Weise gelöst wird." Who or what is this "Figur" (Kinbote?)
The word "gelöst" suggests to me that Nabokov
considers that his novel presents the solution to a
puzzle... (so now we have VN's word for
the solution of a "puzzle")."]
JM: On p.585 of Zimmer's FF I
came to a letter Nabokov wrote to Rust Hills in March, 1961 ( Selected
Letters 1940-1977, Dmitri Nabokov and M.J.Bruccoli, 1980, page 329). It was
written from Nice (Prom. des Anglais).
Nabokov describes his "material" (his words here
are quite fascinating! I wonder what Nabokov added in the parenthsis
intended for magazine publication of the isolated poem):
"It is a narrative poem of 999 lines in
four cantos supposed to be written by an American poet and scholar, one of the
characters in my new novel (footnote: "Pale Fire". Esquire declined
VN's offer because of its policy against publishing poetry.), where it will
be reproduced and annotated by a madman. The parenthesis I have added for
magazine publication at the end of the last canto explains briefly, but I think
sufficiently, what the pre-novel reader should know. If you want this poem
despite its being rather racy and tricky, and unpleasant, and bizarre, I must
ask you to publish all four cantos. The novel is going to take several more
months to finish, and there might be some showable parts later
on."
...........................................................
PS 2: Stan, the etymology of words may help to
clarify certain mysteries or augment our puzzlement about the way words "travel
about."
I just discovered that the word in German
( "lösung") offers the same equivocation as when it is rendered as
"solution." in English ( "solução" in Portuguese, aso). Related to the puzzle constituted by "Pale Fire", for
example, could it ironically mean that its "solution" is
either very diluted or too concentrated to be able
to ellucidate an atheist's concept about the
afterlife?
Yesterday, by coincidence, an atheist
friend ( a reader of Eliade and Nietzsche) told me that since he was a
child he'd entertained a belief in the hereafter without giving up
his theory about the "eternal recurrence."
Paradise comes to the virtuous
because they only return, eternally, to their happiest childhood scenes
retained in their memories. Hell comes to the sinful because they can only
revisit, over and over, their worst
recollections.