Subject
PALE FIRE epigraph
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Body
EDITOR's NOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Jenifer Parsons for calling attention to the item below on the NYTimes Nabokov Discussion Forum.
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philostrate - 09:34am Jan 21, 2000 EST (#2270 of 2826)
The epigraph, and the book, are about eluding death (among other things) by a madman. It is perfectly obscure and obscurely perfect.
In the epigraph, Johnson notes that a madman has been running around shooting cats, but he confidently laughs and says his own cat, Hodge, won't be shot. Perhaps Hodge is too wily.
In Pale Fire, there is the shooting of Shade by the mad Jack Grey, who mistakes Shade for the judge next door who put him away; Kinbote, of course, thinks the assassin Jacob Gradus mistook Shade for himself, the exiled King of Zembla. Did Kinbote cheat death -- or did Shade? Did he really die? Has he transformed himself into Kinbote or, as the new theory has it, inspired Kinbote from beyond the grave? And has Kinbote's rather murderous interpretation of Shade's poem ruined the poet's legacy -- or has the constrast, in perspective, alerted us to the meaning of the poem?
In the end, it is Shade, the "shadow of a waxwing slain" who escaped the "false azure in the window pane" and "Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky" -- physically dead but immortal.
Shade has always been obsessed with death and he, like Hodge, manages to cheat it.
Well, it's just a guess. But I've stared at that epigraph for a looooong time in the past, usually thinking "What's this got to do with the price of beans?" I may be wrong in the details, but I do think the shooting madman is the trigger. One wonders what role this quote played in the composition process -- did it occur to him after he wrote the book, or during, or before?
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philostrate - 09:34am Jan 21, 2000 EST (#2270 of 2826)
The epigraph, and the book, are about eluding death (among other things) by a madman. It is perfectly obscure and obscurely perfect.
In the epigraph, Johnson notes that a madman has been running around shooting cats, but he confidently laughs and says his own cat, Hodge, won't be shot. Perhaps Hodge is too wily.
In Pale Fire, there is the shooting of Shade by the mad Jack Grey, who mistakes Shade for the judge next door who put him away; Kinbote, of course, thinks the assassin Jacob Gradus mistook Shade for himself, the exiled King of Zembla. Did Kinbote cheat death -- or did Shade? Did he really die? Has he transformed himself into Kinbote or, as the new theory has it, inspired Kinbote from beyond the grave? And has Kinbote's rather murderous interpretation of Shade's poem ruined the poet's legacy -- or has the constrast, in perspective, alerted us to the meaning of the poem?
In the end, it is Shade, the "shadow of a waxwing slain" who escaped the "false azure in the window pane" and "Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky" -- physically dead but immortal.
Shade has always been obsessed with death and he, like Hodge, manages to cheat it.
Well, it's just a guess. But I've stared at that epigraph for a looooong time in the past, usually thinking "What's this got to do with the price of beans?" I may be wrong in the details, but I do think the shooting madman is the trigger. One wonders what role this quote played in the composition process -- did it occur to him after he wrote the book, or during, or before?