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CK replies to Nick Grundy
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 9:02 AM
Subject: CK replies to Nick Grundy
Dear Nick,
Both Shade and Kinbote at times reflect some of Nabokov's opinions, as they are both on the side of art, as opposed to Gradus, who is on some other side.
In your quote, you are veering close to a side of Pale Fire that I have avoided, the theological, mostly because of my total ignorance of the subject. My only contribution to this part of the discussion is the discovery that the word preterist has a specific theological meaning, referring to those who interpret the bible as prophecy.
Shade can hardly call pity the password in a discussion of what does and
does not consitute sin and also regard it as demonic, and the apparent
contradiction could be explained if the Kinbote personality "breaks in" to
Shade's poem at times.
There are two examples of such "intrusions" I can point to. The most glaring appears in the second paragraph of Kinbote's Foreword. "Canto Two, your favorite" is Shade's voice speaking to Sybil. In Shade's poem the lines "like some little lad forced by a wench with his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench" sounds like Kinbote's voice, although in his comment to the line he uncharacteristically plays dumb.
I don't know how others can explain these intrusions, but to me they are an important part of the evidence that Shade is not shot, but metamorphs into Kinbote. Similarly in Jekyll and Hyde, as Nabokov points out in his discussion of that story, Jekyll and Hyde are not exclusively one or the other, but each always retains some remnant of the other personality.
Carolyn
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nick Grundy" <nick@bsad.org>
> To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Saturday, November 09, 2002 5:00 AM
> Subject: reply to Carolyn Kunin re Pale Fire puzzle
>
>
>> This message was originally submitted by nick@BSAD.ORG to the NABOKV-L
> list
>>
>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (43
> lines) ------------------
>> Carolyn Kunin wrote:
>>> p.s. There are many things I don't understand, among which are
>>>
>>> 3) an author whose intent is to write a book whose intent is impossible
>> to discern. There are of course some writers >(French, I think) who write
>> like this, but I don't see much point to reading them.
>>
>> and later:
>>> Mr Shade is strange. The diabolical is always lurking. His muse is the
>>> Versipel (not even in the OED, but from Latin versi (change, turn) +
> pel
>>> (hide). The Red Admiral butterfly that he associates with his love for
> his
>>> wife was at one time considered a symbol of death and damnation. His
> youth
>>> was demented and his life twisted, to use his own words.
>>>
>>> Yes, very strange.
>>
>> Indeed! Although it hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out,
>> Shade's poem containing a reference to "demons of pity" is, or at the very
>> least could be argued as, evidence for your position that Shade and
> Kinbote
>> are the same person. Part of a conversation between Shade and Kinbote
>> about the nature of sin runs as follows:
>>
>> KINBOTE: Tut-tut. Do you also deny that there are sins?
>> SHADE: I can name only two: murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain.
>> KINBOTE: Then a man spending his life in absolute solitude could not be a
>> sinner?
>> SHADE: He could torture animals. He could poison the springs on his
>> island. He could denounce an innocent man in a posthumous manifesto.
>> KINBOTE: And so the password is -?
>> SHADE: Pity.
>>
>> Shade can hardly call pity the password in a discussion of what does and
>> does not consitute sin and also regard it as demonic, and the apparent
>> contradiction could be explained if the Kinbote personality "breaks in" to
>> Shade's poem at times.
>>
>> Interestingly, this is one of the moments at which Shade's viewpoint (on
>> what are sins) appears close to VN's own, although whether this has any
>> significance to the subject at hand I don't know. You could also find, in
>> the posthumous manifesto, Shade foreshadowing Kinbote's later treatment of
> him.
>>
>> Nick.
>>
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 9:02 AM
Subject: CK replies to Nick Grundy
Dear Nick,
Both Shade and Kinbote at times reflect some of Nabokov's opinions, as they are both on the side of art, as opposed to Gradus, who is on some other side.
In your quote, you are veering close to a side of Pale Fire that I have avoided, the theological, mostly because of my total ignorance of the subject. My only contribution to this part of the discussion is the discovery that the word preterist has a specific theological meaning, referring to those who interpret the bible as prophecy.
Shade can hardly call pity the password in a discussion of what does and
does not consitute sin and also regard it as demonic, and the apparent
contradiction could be explained if the Kinbote personality "breaks in" to
Shade's poem at times.
There are two examples of such "intrusions" I can point to. The most glaring appears in the second paragraph of Kinbote's Foreword. "Canto Two, your favorite" is Shade's voice speaking to Sybil. In Shade's poem the lines "like some little lad forced by a wench with his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench" sounds like Kinbote's voice, although in his comment to the line he uncharacteristically plays dumb.
I don't know how others can explain these intrusions, but to me they are an important part of the evidence that Shade is not shot, but metamorphs into Kinbote. Similarly in Jekyll and Hyde, as Nabokov points out in his discussion of that story, Jekyll and Hyde are not exclusively one or the other, but each always retains some remnant of the other personality.
Carolyn
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nick Grundy" <nick@bsad.org>
> To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Saturday, November 09, 2002 5:00 AM
> Subject: reply to Carolyn Kunin re Pale Fire puzzle
>
>
>> This message was originally submitted by nick@BSAD.ORG to the NABOKV-L
> list
>>
>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (43
> lines) ------------------
>> Carolyn Kunin wrote:
>>> p.s. There are many things I don't understand, among which are
>>>
>>> 3) an author whose intent is to write a book whose intent is impossible
>> to discern. There are of course some writers >(French, I think) who write
>> like this, but I don't see much point to reading them.
>>
>> and later:
>>> Mr Shade is strange. The diabolical is always lurking. His muse is the
>>> Versipel (not even in the OED, but from Latin versi (change, turn) +
> pel
>>> (hide). The Red Admiral butterfly that he associates with his love for
> his
>>> wife was at one time considered a symbol of death and damnation. His
> youth
>>> was demented and his life twisted, to use his own words.
>>>
>>> Yes, very strange.
>>
>> Indeed! Although it hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out,
>> Shade's poem containing a reference to "demons of pity" is, or at the very
>> least could be argued as, evidence for your position that Shade and
> Kinbote
>> are the same person. Part of a conversation between Shade and Kinbote
>> about the nature of sin runs as follows:
>>
>> KINBOTE: Tut-tut. Do you also deny that there are sins?
>> SHADE: I can name only two: murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain.
>> KINBOTE: Then a man spending his life in absolute solitude could not be a
>> sinner?
>> SHADE: He could torture animals. He could poison the springs on his
>> island. He could denounce an innocent man in a posthumous manifesto.
>> KINBOTE: And so the password is -?
>> SHADE: Pity.
>>
>> Shade can hardly call pity the password in a discussion of what does and
>> does not consitute sin and also regard it as demonic, and the apparent
>> contradiction could be explained if the Kinbote personality "breaks in" to
>> Shade's poem at times.
>>
>> Interestingly, this is one of the moments at which Shade's viewpoint (on
>> what are sins) appears close to VN's own, although whether this has any
>> significance to the subject at hand I don't know. You could also find, in
>> the posthumous manifesto, Shade foreshadowing Kinbote's later treatment of
> him.
>>
>> Nick.
>>