Matt Roth responding to Alexey:
Thanks for your very kind words, Alexey, and also for your corrections and suggestions. I concede the point about "New Eye." I realized this small mistake myself after the article was already accepted, alas. I always thought "New I" was a better reading of New Wye anyway (more on that in a post or article to come!). I agree that the Solus Rex and Ultima Thule links are there and are probably significant. Unfortunately, as things stand we were already way over the stated article length limit for most journals.
Finally, let me take up your point about Prince Vseslav. My source for the info on Vseslav was Jakobson and Szeftel's "The Vseslav Epos," which I believe is still the most extensive article on the topic available in English. I relied on this article in part because we have documentary evidence that VN himself read it and was interested in it. Therefore, it is likely that his own views on Vseslav were heavily influenced by the article. As for the transliterations of "Polock" and "Volx," I have simply used the spellings given by Jakobson and Szeftel. I realize these are obsolete, but in a longer version of that section of our article, I found it confusing to quote the authors using one spelling while using a different spelling in my own prose. I probably should have noted this in a footnote. You also say that Prince Vseslav and the magician Volkh Vseslav'evich are not the same. All I can say is that J&S thought they shared the same source. Allow m
e to quote from their article:
"The hero of the bylina about the prince-werewolf is called Volx (or Vol'x) Vseslav'evic in the text of its oldest variant (D), and Seslav'evic in its title. The form volx originates in the common noun volxv meaning 'magician'. . . . The name Vseslav is rare in Russian tradition. The combination of the nouns Volx and Vseslav to make the full name Volx Vseslav'evic clearly reveals its origin. We find both these nouns linked in the Primary Chronicle (Povest' vremennyx let) in the biography of Vseslav of Polock, who ruled there from 6552/1044 and died in 6609/1101. . . . The great Russian historian S. Solov'ev [et tu, Sergei???] connected the bylina's account of Volx's miraculous coming into the world with the legend in the Chronicle about Vseslav's magical birth."
The authors then go on (in great detail) to make the case that the myths about the prince and the magician are part of the same overall myth. They argue that the Vseslav legend was created "by the prince's contemporaries," who may have wanted to emulate the legends attached to Alexander of Macedonia, "the most glorified conqueror in medieval literature." They point out that Alexander's attributes ("wizarldy wisdom and slyness, superhuman swiftness, vampiric passion, and beastlike habits") very closely match those of Prince Vseslav. That is not to say that the prince's contemporaries created the werewolf myth:
"The werewolf myth is obviously much older than the reign of Vseslav, but the ascribing of this myth to the Polock prince is easily understandable. The unusual, one might say even fantastic, life of the militant Vseslav, his unexpected appearances and vanishings, the lightning-like seizure of powerful Novgorod, the sudden change of the prisoner of the day before into the ruling prince of Kiev, and, in general, his miraculous good luck and supernatural transitions from ruin to glory, from nothingness to triumph and vice versa--all this demanded an explanation. In the eyes of his contemporaries the only explanation of the hero's charmed career lay in his secret powers."
We should also note that in the Onegin translation, VN says that Prince Vseslav is "a kind of Slavic Michael Scot," a reference to the nearly contemporaneous Scottish magician. This implies, I think, that VN himself connected the prince with the Volx Vseslav'evic (magician) legend.
Best,
Matt Roth
>>> On 4/27/2009 at 2:35 AM, in message <000401c9c707$0abf56a0$391c1154@ALEX1>, Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:
from Alexey Sklyarenko:
I read with great interest Matt Roth & Tiffany DeRewal's article in NOJ. Although I'm not a Pale Fire specialist, the article seems to me a major event in the Pale Fire scholarship, being a kind of synthesis of Carolyn Kunin's multiple personality and Brian Boyd's Shadean theories. But just like the authors call Pale Fire "a near-perfect work of art", their article can be called "a near-flawless piece of criticism". I have permitted myself to point out a few minor errors that don't undermine the authors' theory and that could have been easily avoided.
Prince Vseslav of Polotsk (the alternative transliteration "Polock" is incorrect) and Volkh (not "Volx"!) Vseslavovich are two different men. While the former, Prince Vseslav Brechislavovich, is a real person, the Kievan prince who lived in the XIth century and who is mentioned in Slovo o polku Igoreve, the latter, Volkh (this name comes not from volk, "wolf", but from volkhv, "magician, sourcerer") Vseslav'evich, is a hero of Russian folklore, son of Marfa Vseslav'evna by a snake. You can see here the bylina (Russian traditional heroic poem) about him included in Kirsha Danilov's collection: http://feb-web.ru/feb/byliny/texts/bpu/bpu-089-.htm (in Russian). It is probably irrelevant, but Kirsha = sharik ("little sphere")* = riksha ("rickshaw")
One might be tempted to hear New Eye in New Wye, the Appalachian town in Pale Fire (1962), but The Eye, the English version of Nabokov's Soglyadatay (1930), appeared only in 1965. Until then Nabokov hardly knew what new title he will give to his old Russian novella.
The authors of the article speak a lot of The Eye and Despair but don't even mention Solus Rex, Nabokov's last Russian novel that was to remain unfinished (its two chapters, Solus Rex and Ultima Thule were published as separate stories in 1940 and 1942, respectively). It is much closer to Pale Fire than any other work by Nabokov. The artist Sineusov,** the hero of Ultima Thule, and K. (the king in chess notation), the hero of Solus Rex (which is set in a distant northern island), seem to be one and the same person. K.'s first cousin, Prince Adulf, the only son of King Gafon and heir to the throne who is to be assassinated by extremists, is eclectic in his sexual tastes. Adam Falter, a character in Ultima Thule, is a medium, like Hazel Shade in Pale Fire. There are many more parallels.
These comments will do for now.
*Sharik is the name of the dog that is surgically transformed into a human being in Bulgakov's story Sobach'e serdtse ("The Dog's Heart", 1926). Whether VN knew this story (it was first published only in the 1980s, but the author had read it in Moscow to a number of fellow writers, some of whom, like Zamyatin, might later emigrate) is a tantalizing question.
**The name Sineusov hints at Sineus, the legendary Varangian prince who is said to have come to Russia with Ryurik. Whether Sineus comes from siniy us (Russian from "blue moustache hair") or sine hus (corrupted old-Swedish for "his kin") is a different question.
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.