Thank you for wonderful post - - fascinating subjects all. Since I ;ve been looking into a book on the British experience with the occult at the turn of the last century (The Place of Enchantment) which is disappointing in that it takes all the magic and astral travel stuff seriously, or seems to. But for our discussion I was very intrigued to learn that Crowley himself placed great importance on two works that may have a bearing on Pale Fire, namely Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde. The apparently serious mountaineering is also intriguing. I begin to wonder if Nabokov didn't know more about Crowley than I would have thought.

Your point about Duchamp I think should also be taken seriously in any attempt to understand Nabokov ... the artist who found greater aesthetic fulfillment in chess play than in art. Besides making his own chess-pieces, didn't he also write a book on the subject? Certainly I would argue that Pale Fire is an attempt to blend the two, puzzles and aesthetics, into one work. Ironic to think that in doing this Nabokov may be following in the footsteps of Dostoevsky who was the first in Russian literature to combine the murder-mystery with the serious literary work. Along the same line, we know that Nabokov highly regarded Poe  - -  but do we know what he thought of Dickens I wonder?

Carolyn