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Re: VN's Self-Reference in Pale Fire
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On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 7:26 PM, NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@holycross.edu> wrote:
>
> You mention the place at the end of the Commentary where Kinbote gives way
> to "the old, happy, heterosexual Russian." I've always thought there's a
> corresponding point near the end of Shade's poem. It comes here, in lines
> 923-930:
>
> *Now I shall speak of evil as none has*
> *Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;*
> *The white-hosed moron torturing a black*
> *Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;*
> *Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;*
> *Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;*
> *Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx*
> *Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.*
> *
> *
> Everything after "I loathe" is not Shade but rather pure Nabokov--the VN
> who speaks in interviews and critical essays and for whom Humbert often
> provided the voice. But here it is such an obvious intrusion--as if Shade
> had stopped writing and a pre-cut set of pet peeves had been pasted in--that
> I assume it's VN's way of winking at us from behind the character he's
> created and is now making fun of.
>
> If, on the other hand, as many now are claiming, VN was trying in every
> line to write the best poem he could write, then these lines strike me as
> being among the weakest in the poem--weak because, if for no other reason,
> they're downright silly.
>
No sillier than some of Nabokov's interview answers--not that that proves
anything about poetry.
Certainly Nabokov said explicitly that he had given Shade (and Kinbote, he
could have added) some of his own opinions.
> It's worth remembering that VN did not always describe the poem in the
> manner quoted in the article that Matt recently posted. In his letter to
> Rust Hills dated March 23, 1961, offering the poem to *Esquire*, he said:
> "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." Those
> are adjectives that some readers would prefer not to apply to Shade's poem,
> though they obviously apply to the Commentary and to many other of VN's
> works.
>
Another very interesting quotation, so thanks! I agree completely that
those adjectives apply to many of VN's works, and given that, I'm not sure
why anyone would object to applying them to Shade's poem. Well, either I'm
missing something beyond a count of a married couple's times sharing a
pillow, or the poem isn't very racy. (Or "racy of the soil"--Matt's
quotation about New England reminded me that there's nothing in the book
that even faintly suggests regional culture.)
In any case, I was pleased to read Simon's query and your response. It's
> good to know that someone besides Dowling is pursuing this line of thought.
> The problem I've had when I've tried to follow it through is that I can't
> keep my "ahh" from collapsing, finally, into my "duh" and I find myself back
> where I started. It's too bad that Dowling himself, at least as far as I
> know, has never published his promised second paper on the subject.
>
> Jim Twiggs
>
I wrote to Dowling a year or two ago about that second paper, and he wrote
back that he would probably never write it, which I think is too bad. (I
thought I'd mentioned that here, but I don't see it in the archives.)
I too was interested in Simon Rowberry's theory. I must say I don't see the
hint that "Professor So-and-So" could have been VN (or the narrator of *Pnin
*?), since Kinbote's first publisher told him they would consult with the
professor, and then Kinbote switched publishers, before Kinbote even started
the commentary.
To Nick Greer: I think Kinbote's Russianness is adequately explained if he's
Botkin.
As I've mentioned before, the first part of the "happy, healthy" line indeed
describes Nabokov, but the "sans" phrases are very untrue of him at the time
he was writing *Pale Fire*, and "sans anything but his art" was never even
close to being true of him.
I don't see the "recovered kingdom" as referring to Montreux. But as a
dream of returning to Russia, "history permitting", it would have been
something VN knew quite well, and many if not most of the readers of PF
would have known that.
My reading of the book includes the idea that a lot of it is supposed to
focus our attention on its being a fictional creation (by Nabokov), so I
agree with Nick and Simon in many ways.
Jerry Friedman
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>
> You mention the place at the end of the Commentary where Kinbote gives way
> to "the old, happy, heterosexual Russian." I've always thought there's a
> corresponding point near the end of Shade's poem. It comes here, in lines
> 923-930:
>
> *Now I shall speak of evil as none has*
> *Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;*
> *The white-hosed moron torturing a black*
> *Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;*
> *Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;*
> *Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;*
> *Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx*
> *Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.*
> *
> *
> Everything after "I loathe" is not Shade but rather pure Nabokov--the VN
> who speaks in interviews and critical essays and for whom Humbert often
> provided the voice. But here it is such an obvious intrusion--as if Shade
> had stopped writing and a pre-cut set of pet peeves had been pasted in--that
> I assume it's VN's way of winking at us from behind the character he's
> created and is now making fun of.
>
> If, on the other hand, as many now are claiming, VN was trying in every
> line to write the best poem he could write, then these lines strike me as
> being among the weakest in the poem--weak because, if for no other reason,
> they're downright silly.
>
No sillier than some of Nabokov's interview answers--not that that proves
anything about poetry.
Certainly Nabokov said explicitly that he had given Shade (and Kinbote, he
could have added) some of his own opinions.
> It's worth remembering that VN did not always describe the poem in the
> manner quoted in the article that Matt recently posted. In his letter to
> Rust Hills dated March 23, 1961, offering the poem to *Esquire*, he said:
> "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." Those
> are adjectives that some readers would prefer not to apply to Shade's poem,
> though they obviously apply to the Commentary and to many other of VN's
> works.
>
Another very interesting quotation, so thanks! I agree completely that
those adjectives apply to many of VN's works, and given that, I'm not sure
why anyone would object to applying them to Shade's poem. Well, either I'm
missing something beyond a count of a married couple's times sharing a
pillow, or the poem isn't very racy. (Or "racy of the soil"--Matt's
quotation about New England reminded me that there's nothing in the book
that even faintly suggests regional culture.)
In any case, I was pleased to read Simon's query and your response. It's
> good to know that someone besides Dowling is pursuing this line of thought.
> The problem I've had when I've tried to follow it through is that I can't
> keep my "ahh" from collapsing, finally, into my "duh" and I find myself back
> where I started. It's too bad that Dowling himself, at least as far as I
> know, has never published his promised second paper on the subject.
>
> Jim Twiggs
>
I wrote to Dowling a year or two ago about that second paper, and he wrote
back that he would probably never write it, which I think is too bad. (I
thought I'd mentioned that here, but I don't see it in the archives.)
I too was interested in Simon Rowberry's theory. I must say I don't see the
hint that "Professor So-and-So" could have been VN (or the narrator of *Pnin
*?), since Kinbote's first publisher told him they would consult with the
professor, and then Kinbote switched publishers, before Kinbote even started
the commentary.
To Nick Greer: I think Kinbote's Russianness is adequately explained if he's
Botkin.
As I've mentioned before, the first part of the "happy, healthy" line indeed
describes Nabokov, but the "sans" phrases are very untrue of him at the time
he was writing *Pale Fire*, and "sans anything but his art" was never even
close to being true of him.
I don't see the "recovered kingdom" as referring to Montreux. But as a
dream of returning to Russia, "history permitting", it would have been
something VN knew quite well, and many if not most of the readers of PF
would have known that.
My reading of the book includes the idea that a lot of it is supposed to
focus our attention on its being a fictional creation (by Nabokov), so I
agree with Nick and Simon in many ways.
Jerry Friedman
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/