Allow me to say first, that I approach Pale Fire, not as a
scholar of Nabokov Studies, but as a member of the reading public who happens to
enjoy some, but not all Nabokov. I am afraid I didn't realize how radical my
reading would appear, since it stays within the realm of known psychological
phenomena and doesn't require acceptance, within the novel at least, of mystical
beliefs in the survival of consciousness in the hereafter. Not to mention the
ability of such consciousnesses to mess with the minds of the living. As you can
tell, "The Vane Sisters" isn't on my preferred Nabokovian reading
list.
Also, since we're on this theme, and it is a theme in Pale
Fire, Nabokov may be referring to the battle of the spirits that took place
between Conan Doyle and Houdini (who I think I recognized in the index
somewhere). I do not know which side Nabokov was on. I happen to be on
Houdini's, but that doesn't preclude my accepting the otherworldly
interpretation.
Rather than defend my position, since I am still working
on it, and have much work to do, let me just pose some of the questions that
bothered me while reading the novel and that I don't find answered it the
other interpretations of which I am aware:
Who are those five persons
Shade sees in the fingers of his hand?
What is that near pornographic
line (quench, wench) doing in the poem?
Who is the baby whose cry Aunt
Maud lives to hear?
Would an ugly but brilliant young woman really commit
suicide because of a disasterous blind date?
Why is Shade's name an
obvious anagram of Hades?
Why is his muse a versipel?
Why does he
speak of shame and remorse in his poem?
Why doesn't Shade know what his
parents looked like?
Why does Kinbote inform us that his idol, John
Shade, is a complete mask?
Why is the murder scene so
clownish?
How could a nut like Kinbote teach anything to anybody? [I
know, I know, D, still don't buy it]
Why does Shade tolerate his
intolerable neighbor?
Why does Sybil put up with a husband who allows a
maniac into the house?
Why does the King of Zembla wear Shade's
slippers?
I do not buy Shade as kindly neighbor. Kinbote's activities, by
his own description of them, amount to stalking the Shades. Now Mr Shade may be
a saint (he isn't, however), but he is putting his family in danger by letting a
vindictive maniac in the house. Sybil is clearly upset, but if I were her, I
would leave such a husband tout de suite.
If Shade had been
murdered, his body would be in police custody for some time. If Kinbote hadn't
been invited to the funeral, we would have heard about it. I think there was no
funeral and that strikes me as very odd. The poet was clearly a beloved
institution in New Wye so why no funeral? Perhaps Nabokov forgot? Maybe. Not
important? Maybe.
I will admit to needing help with much of the English
Lit references in Pale Fire (I studied Russian and French in school) but I do
recognize a reference to the Sherlock Holmes when I see it, and I say there are
a lot of very quiet dogs in Pale Fire (and one noisy
one).