C.Kunin: There are indeed
"Shadian bits and pieces shining thru .. K." And Kinbotean bits lurking in Shade
as well [...] page one, paragraph two:
The short (166 lines) Canto One, with
all those amusing birds and parhelia, occupies thirteen cards. Canto Two, your
favorite ....I argue that this is John Shade addressing Sybil. If not, who is
Kinbote addressing?
JM:Not really a convert, Carolyn, but
a helpful devil's advocate? Your first example is almost convincing
but it is still possible to conjecture that Kinbote had been referring
to himself (your favorite=my favorite)
J.Aisenberg: I take it you either do believe that Hyde's assaults
and crimes are equivalent to Kinbote's rude an unethical behavior, or
you believe that Nabokov thought so. If he did then it seems to
me that, far more than the logical problems this parallel foists on the
story, would be the "fatal flaw", since there's no equivalent between the two
[...] Pale Fire would flatten these kinds of distinctions out-[...]I'm here
leaving asside the theoretical nature of Kinbote's activities as you understand
them, versus the Hyde persona's actual activities and am simply weighing them
abstractly against one another.
JM: In
full agreement. And yet ( again) there is something VN wrote in his
lecture on J&H which is worth bringing up again:" since something of the composite
Jekyll remains behind to wonder in horror at Hyde
while Hyde is in action."
The composite
Jekyll can be horrified at Hyde... while Hyde is in action ( not when he
stares at himself in the mirror and finds Hyde or feels his evil inclinations
while recognizes them as also being his own).Cp. with "Hyde persona's
actual activities" instead of "the theoretical nature" of
Kinbote's.
I think Nabokov
refrained from letting Kinbote act out his fantasies, he merely set
them down on paper dividing agressiveness (the shadows and Gradus) and
homoerotic impulses.