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Fw: [NABOKV-L] A.S. Brown on Kinbote's Christianity
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Re: [NABOKV-L] A.S. Brown on Kinbote's ChristianityDear Andrew and dear List,
The expression "fundamentalist Christian" carries an ironic ring to my ears. It was a clever way of blending Christian faith and fanatics (such as Kinbote) and there was no need of any Rosetta-stone to decypher that. But there are one or two questions I'd like to ask.
You wrote: "Kinbote's Zemblan religious practices, particularly his acolyte memories, bear no resemblance to any Christian service I've ever seen. VN never claimed to be Christian, and I do not think he heavily researched any Protestant or Catholic religious practices in order to make Charles Kinbote into a "real" one. There would be no place for such a character in Pale Fire."
Like you, I think there is no place in VN's fiction for the explicitation of real-life characters (their reality has to be felt by other means). Still, I remember a lot of information about the Biblical translations that were chosen by VN in Brian Boyd's annotations ( found at the Zemblan ADA On-line).
Biblical reading is not only for those who have religious faith. It is also good literature. I doubt VN would have given it only a light reading.
When you wrote about the young priest episode (note to lines 47-48) you considered him as "the subject of one of Charles Kinbote's Zemblan childhood memories. Assuming Kinbote had an actual past that was not the creation of another mind." Are you here implying that you agree that Kinbote and John Shade are the same individual (like C.Kunin), do you think he might be the mysterious Dr. Botkin - or was he someone else altogether?
If, "in the end, Shade's soul flies free, in defiance of the old expression of a ghost, a shade, being "laid" as in "laid to rest."...we can assume Shade reached a paradise of some kind. And Kinbote, what do you think happened to him?
Jansy
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The expression "fundamentalist Christian" carries an ironic ring to my ears. It was a clever way of blending Christian faith and fanatics (such as Kinbote) and there was no need of any Rosetta-stone to decypher that. But there are one or two questions I'd like to ask.
You wrote: "Kinbote's Zemblan religious practices, particularly his acolyte memories, bear no resemblance to any Christian service I've ever seen. VN never claimed to be Christian, and I do not think he heavily researched any Protestant or Catholic religious practices in order to make Charles Kinbote into a "real" one. There would be no place for such a character in Pale Fire."
Like you, I think there is no place in VN's fiction for the explicitation of real-life characters (their reality has to be felt by other means). Still, I remember a lot of information about the Biblical translations that were chosen by VN in Brian Boyd's annotations ( found at the Zemblan ADA On-line).
Biblical reading is not only for those who have religious faith. It is also good literature. I doubt VN would have given it only a light reading.
When you wrote about the young priest episode (note to lines 47-48) you considered him as "the subject of one of Charles Kinbote's Zemblan childhood memories. Assuming Kinbote had an actual past that was not the creation of another mind." Are you here implying that you agree that Kinbote and John Shade are the same individual (like C.Kunin), do you think he might be the mysterious Dr. Botkin - or was he someone else altogether?
If, "in the end, Shade's soul flies free, in defiance of the old expression of a ghost, a shade, being "laid" as in "laid to rest."...we can assume Shade reached a paradise of some kind. And Kinbote, what do you think happened to him?
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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