SKB wrote:
Pale-Fire-the-isolated-poem (no CK preamble, notes, glosses or index, recall. No distractions! The poem, the poem and nothing but the poem) would , continuing my what-if, enter the honoured VN canon, in fully annotated editions WITH NUMBERED LINES ASSIGNED! One can even imagine editions accruing near-Kimbotean footnotes and
critical baggage, since, at least some of the novel’s CK notes are genuine, accurate comments on allusions and events in the-PF-poem-qua-poem, and could be independently divined by scholars without CK’s help.
Of course, my fantasy is just that. PF-the-cantos could not really exist as self-contained poem signed by VN. The PF-poem was specifically engineered as an integral part of the complex masterpiece known as PF-the-novel.
====
Stan,
Although I, for one, greatly appreciate your good letter, I fear you underestimate the ambitions of the Nabokov industry. For their next trick, according to R.S. Gwynn in a post dated 11/1/09, they are planning an edition very like the one you describe. Here, for convenience, is what Gwynn wrote:
In an essay to be published by Gingko Press as part of a "facsimile" edition of Shade's notecards, I suggest that Yvor Winters, whom VN knew, is a plausible model for Shade. Brian Boyd has written a splendid analysis of the poem (which should put to rest forever the notion promoted by some that VN intentionally wrote a "bad" poem to serve as a mere sounding board for Kinbote's rhapsodics). It is clear from the poem that Shade is intended to be a younger competitor of ("one oozy footprint behind") Frost.
======
As for "Stang," I hope I've understood the critics of my message better than they've understood me. Since we're talking right past one another, there seems no reason to go on.
Jim Twiggs