Please forgive the self-promotional aspect of this
message, but I would like to invite all interested Nabokovians and Nabokophiles
to take a look at “A Guide to Kinbote’s Commentary,” a kind
of phenomenological study of the reference patterns in Kinbote’s
commentary that appeared on Zembla earlier this month together with a companion
essay called “Synthesizing Artistic Delight: The Lesson of Pale Fire.” The screenshot
below comes from the explanation of the diagrams, which track Kinbote’s diversions
of the reader to other parts of the text(s). The “Guide” maps
all such references in the commentary’s 131 notes and shows, among other
things, a fairly precipitous drop in the number of such diversions in the notes
keyed to the later lines of the poem (an interesting aspect that the essay
addresses). My hope and intention in submitting the diagrams to Zembla
was to provide anyone interested with an opportunity to consider this
much-discussed work from an unusual perspective (and perhaps to open up some
new lines of inquiry into it).
Here’s a link to the “Guide”: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/walter2.htm
And here’s a link to the companion article, “Synthesizing
Artistic Delight”: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/walter.htm
Thank you.
Brian Walter
