On Sep 1, 2010, at 6:12 AM, Nabokv-L wrote:
If Kinbote knows that he is a delusion... then he is not a delusion at all... Botkin, who may be strange, but is not insane. For in order to be considered an alternate personality, the personality must believe in its own reality....
Good point but you are conflating the term insane with delusional and/or dissociated identity.
I.e., Kinbote may be a madman, if you can accept this term as meaning odd or strange, for wanting to assume another identity and to be addressed as such, without necessarily being delusional about his identity; a little like a male transvestite who still knows that he is male.
Shade, if quoted accurately by Kinbote, says as much in the commentary to line 629(The fate of beasts):
"That is the wrong word," he said. "One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention. That's merely turning a new leaf with the left hand."