JM: Jim Twiggs questions the meanings
of Shade's words, "faint hope": "At the very least, as JF agrees, they
represent a marked deflation of mood. But they could also mean something even
more abrupt. They could mean the fainting away of hope. They could also be an
expression of self-sarcasm on the level of 'yeah, right'.” He leaves
aside the possibility that, although faint, hope may still grow in
force.
JT also refers to "not text, but
texture," at a time when Nabokov had not yet made Van Veen retroact to
precog what will appear in his chapter on "the texture of time"*.
Nevertheless, the word "texture", like
"faint", opens the way for diverse interpretations (a sensorial
quality registered by touch instead of by "vision"? the weave of a
fabric and, perhaps, its wrinkle or crease? that which relates
not to content but to a container?). Therefore, to get to its
"contexture" one needs to establish what it is that Shade
means. However, it's exactly "meaning" that which, for him, will have to be
abandoned to reach "texture," thereby moving beyond
a textual meaning**
Jim Twiggs's last point [One
last point. Earlier I wrote that Pale Fire could be read either as a statement
of skepticism or as a profession of faith. But of course there’s a third
possibility, namely that the novel dramatizes the uncertainty between skepticism
and faith (and a good many other things as well). This reading, which goes back
a long way, is the one that in fact I endorse"] stimulated me
to offer a fourth possibility: instead of skepticism and/or faith, an
increase in self-awareness and consciousness (for that demands no logical
certainty, nor faith).
In RLSK an "iniciatic" route seems to have
been outlined ( there's "Le morte d'Arthur" in
Sebastian's bookcase, there arecharacters named Perceval; Boyd
mentions (RY) that Nabokov admired Chrétien de Troyes's legends about
chivalry). A quest for a holy grail (graal,gradalis, gradale, gral,
grallon, gasum,grasalo as receptacles, also related to gradatim and gratus
according to Chrétien***), disguised as "who was Sebastian and his
real life" - a literary quest (this is the only certainty I
have, right now).
In a tortuous, mainly sonorous way, "graal"
seems to carry a resonance with the name "Gradus," who steps forth
from invisible Zembla. In PF we find a
mediocre Gradus, who is constantly shadowing Shade's text and
being created by him at the same time. Shade, in
his turn, may be seen as a prosaic "hero" (like
Sebastian), who moves from a description of his childhood up
to the moment when he crosses America, in search of a "white
fountain". Shade could find no material proof
of his experience with "the other side of life" and yet, his "quest"
seems to have led him towards "texture" (whatever that
means) and "a faint hope"( ib.). If Gradus and death indicates
a "containing vessel" ("texture"), it seems fitting that Shade's meeting
Gradus stopped him from writing verse 1000 (that would,
very probably, bring him back to the beginning).
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
* - Excerpts: "Van agreed to use the means of transportation
made available to him by a chance crease in the texture of time, and seated
himself in the old calèche..." [...] "nothing seemed changed in one sense, all was lost
in another. Such-contacts evolve their own texture; a tactile sensation is a
blind spot; we touch in silhouette"[...]. But many years later, when working on his
Texture of Time, Van found in that phenomenon additional proof of real
time’s being connected with the interval between events, not with their
‘passage,’ not with their blending, not with their shading the gap
wherein the pure and impenetrable texture of time
transpires..." Long before Van, Shade mentions: "some quirk in space/Has caused a fold or furrow to
displace/ The fragile vista" ( not time, here, but
space)
** - Perhaps that's what JF indicates by "I care that Bach
believed in the religion of his Passions but not that of his
Masses."
*** - According to Michel Zink, in "The Graal, a salvation myth" ("O
Olhar de Orfeu", "O Graal, um mito de salvação", Bernadette Bricout,
Ed.Companhia das Letras)
Jim Twiggs: I always admire the thought and care that go into Jerry Friedman’s
contributions to the List. This latest one does not disappoint.I agree with much
of what JF says. The differences between us may finally come down mainly to
matters of taste ...As for the connection between “not text, but texture” and
Shade’s final embrace of personal immortality, I see a logical gap where JF sees
a (logical?) development. At the end of the poem, Shade’s feeling is one of
“all’s right with the world”--a feeling consistent with having just finished an
intense and difficult labor which has involved in part his coming to terms with
grief (or at least thinking he has). It is in this mood that he produces both
the conceit--surely it is no more than a bit of poetic fancy--that the universe
throbs to an iambic meter and also his conviction that Hazel “somewhere is
alive.”
[JF: “I'd add that at the ends of both Invitation to a Beheading and
Bend Sinister, the connection between the author's higher world and a
character's afterlife is visible (‘a good night for mothing’).”] But the
fact that one can do something in words (create metafictions, for example) is no
evidence for the actual existence of a Great Writer in the Sky...death is a
great deal more than a wrinkle in language.
...