Subject
Hazel's unattractiveness
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>This is the problem. Why does it bother the Shades so much that their
>daughter is unattractive?
Does it bother Sybil so much? She sensibly urged John to "rejoice
that she is innocent" and not
"overstress the physical."
In my posts to this list on 12-14-05, 12-15-05, 12-22-05, 4-17-06,
and 11-4-06, I drew some dark inferences about John Shade's role in
his daughter's tragedy, and about his total (as far as I can see)
lack of awareness of this, as a father and as a poet. His reaction to
Hazel's role on stage is one of the most telling bits.
Pale Fire for me was a FAR richer experience after I read Brian
Boyd's Nabokov's Pale Fire, but he seems to have missed this. I hope
we can look forward to another edition from him, or to a sequel. Or
at least to a solution to the interpretive problems here: Hazel after
death may have forgiven her father all, but if her spirit or shade
plays so active a role (or as I would put it, so large a role) in his
creative life, wouldn't we still expect that she (or it) would in the
process have provided him some moral illumination about human beauty
and familial love?
I don't see how Shade's poem can be regarded as an unalloyed
masterpiece or the work of a major poet.
But I don't think this issue "upset(s) the whole moral balance of the
book," as Elspeth Jajdelska suggests it might. And I don't think
NABOKOV'S poem, Pale Fire, is diminished by the sins of John Shade.
Isn't the book enriched with yet another distorted reflection of the
world? What we know of John Shade and his "sanity" and "values" is
what we infer from his poem and from Kinbote. Things, as usual, are
not what they seem.
Walter Miale
wm@greenworldcenter.org
http://www.survivalversusdoom.net
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
>daughter is unattractive?
Does it bother Sybil so much? She sensibly urged John to "rejoice
that she is innocent" and not
"overstress the physical."
In my posts to this list on 12-14-05, 12-15-05, 12-22-05, 4-17-06,
and 11-4-06, I drew some dark inferences about John Shade's role in
his daughter's tragedy, and about his total (as far as I can see)
lack of awareness of this, as a father and as a poet. His reaction to
Hazel's role on stage is one of the most telling bits.
Pale Fire for me was a FAR richer experience after I read Brian
Boyd's Nabokov's Pale Fire, but he seems to have missed this. I hope
we can look forward to another edition from him, or to a sequel. Or
at least to a solution to the interpretive problems here: Hazel after
death may have forgiven her father all, but if her spirit or shade
plays so active a role (or as I would put it, so large a role) in his
creative life, wouldn't we still expect that she (or it) would in the
process have provided him some moral illumination about human beauty
and familial love?
I don't see how Shade's poem can be regarded as an unalloyed
masterpiece or the work of a major poet.
But I don't think this issue "upset(s) the whole moral balance of the
book," as Elspeth Jajdelska suggests it might. And I don't think
NABOKOV'S poem, Pale Fire, is diminished by the sins of John Shade.
Isn't the book enriched with yet another distorted reflection of the
world? What we know of John Shade and his "sanity" and "values" is
what we infer from his poem and from Kinbote. Things, as usual, are
not what they seem.
Walter Miale
wm@greenworldcenter.org
http://www.survivalversusdoom.net
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