i think the two words,"primal scene" are a suboptimal choice as they are derived from Freudian lore,and as such might be objectionable in writing about VN. Secondly, there are so many things in VN's life that came before his father's assasination, like butterflies, girls,love of vernal country side that the assasination while important, can hardly be called primal.


-----Original Message-----
From: R S Gwynn <Rsgwynn1@CS.COM>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wed, Feb 29, 2012 10:38 am
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...


RSGwynn: [to JM's this is a very good line of argumentation, considering Quilty "as an invention within the invention"...] So HH wrote the Foreword under the pseudonym of John Ray, Jr., Ph. D., and then conveniently died in prison a few days before his trial for the figurative murder of CQ?  More meta- than this fiction needs, I think.

JM: Is it always necessary to resort to meta-fiction while exploring the possible worlds of a novel? How shall we consider the status of "Gradus" in "Pale Fire," or Kinbote's reports about his actual delusions?
  
If Humbert Humbert had simply been transfered from the psychopathic ward to an insane asylum after committing a crime, his notes and John Ray,Jr.'s foreword would fit into the ordinary scheme of the novel.  HH might even have killed some other guy who he thought had been his nymphet's stalker and abductor (like J.Shade's murder, instead of J.Goldsworth's, in PF, as another reference to VN's father's assassination in Berlin?). 

I'm sure thatVN continually returned to the "primal scene" of his father's assassination, which could not have been less than the most significant event of his whole life.  I don't think that Humbert's murder of CQ is very relevant here, but the accidental murder of JS probably is, at least in some remote autobiographical way.

Did Humbert murder CQ?  Yes, if we believe that he is being held in solitary confinement (after being in a psychiatric ward) before his trial, where he writes "Lolita, or "The Confession of a White, Widowed Male" in the time leading up to its beginning.  He is spared the trial by his "fortunate" death (kind of like Krug's madness in BS).  If you disagree with this, you must (1) come up with an alternate crime that HH is being held and tried for (driving on the wrong side of the road?); or (2) a belief that someone can be tried for the crime of "figurative murder."

I won't even go into the whole Gradus thing except to ask one simple question: Why did VN go to such pains to establish the Goldsworth/Grey connection except as foreshadowing to give a "rational" explanation as to why JS (who resembled the Judge and was just outside his house) was shot by an escaped madman as a result of mistaken identity?  Red herrings galore? I don't think so. Gradus is Kinbote's fantasy (How does he know about the various movements of Gradus in Europe, for example, except from reports from his equally fantastical sources, which may be totally his own invention?). 

Doesn't Kinbote say something like "Lord, make it stop"?  There are plenty of clues that he is V. Botkin, in thrall to a second, now stronger identity.

RSG
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.