Gary Lippon [to Vladimir Mylnikov's "the fun part of the book is that the poem, the
commentary, and the index are inseparable."] "My opinion is that
Pale Fire is an extraordinary work and VN's reputation as poet derives
mainly from it...My belief is that VN wanted to continue the poetic narrative
tradition established by his beloved Eugene Onegin ...I believe VN
saw, correctly, the limited market for a long, or longish, traditional narrative
poem...the combination poem-and-novel was a clever solution to this conflict of
purposes. Thus Pale Fire, the poem is to be read as the better half of
the duplex... Kinbote mainly uses Shade's poem, freely, as a
jumping off point for his own series of humorous
vignettes..."
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Jansy Mello: In Strong Opinions Nabokov quotes and
explains one of his favorite poems and demonstrates its structural
echoes as it appears in the original Russian. Although I can share the
effect of a "poetic emotion," after VN's explanations, I'd
only effetively appreciate it by hearing it's being read in
Russian.*
How could Nabokov compare Pushkin's exclamation "what a silly
country" to Tyutchev's and Goethe's a "hundred-eyed beast," if there wasn't
something sombrely Russian in his soul to lend perspective,
or a "four-dimensional" coutour, to what he'd been
experiencing and, desparingly, translating?
Stan observed, in a past posting, "Einstein did indeed make
many famous errors. When corrected by his peers, he acknowledged his mistakes,
but added the claim: I’ve earned the right to be wrong! VN, the great
novelist/memoirist, has earned similar rights. " He left it open to
one's interpretative powers to discover if the conclusion of
what "similar rights" mean, embraces both options: Nabokov earned the right
to be wrong and Nabokov earned the right to be judged by his peers.
btw: Stan's comment fits well in spirit, with the
epigraph Housman chose for his lecture on "The Name and
Nature of Poetry" (Coleridge's Anima Poetae, pp.127 f).
"The question should be fairly stated, how far a man can be an
adequate, or even a good (so far as he goes) though inadequate critic of poetry,
who is not a poet, at least in posse. Can he be an adequate, can he be a
good critic, though not commensurate? But there is yet another distinction.
Supposing he is not only not a poet, but is a bad poet! What then?"
From VN's Selected Letters, on p.272/273 there's an answer to the
hen/egg matter you raised concerning the writing of PF, poem or novel, from
a letter VN addressed to Jason Epstein:
"My main creature, an ex-king, is engaged
throught Pale Fire in a certain quest. This quest, or research (which
at one point, alas, involves some very sophisticated spiritualism), is
completely divorced from any so-called faith or religion, gods, God, Heaven,
Folklore, etc...My creature's quest is centered in the problem of heretofore and
hereafter, and it is I may say beautifully solved. The story starts at Ultima
Thule, an insular kingdom, where a palace intrigue and some assistance from Nova
Zembla clear the way for a dull and savage revolution. My main creature the King
of Thule, is dethroned. After some wonderful adventures he escapes to
America. Certain political complications lead President Kennedy to answer
evasively when questioned about the displaced personage. He lives more or less
incognito with the lady he loves, somewhere on the border of Upstate New YOrk
and Montario...from the picture window of my creature's house one can see the
bright mud if a private road and a leafless tree al at once abloom with a dozen
waxwings. The book is regularly interrupted, without any logical or
stylistical transition, right in the middle of a sentence...by glimpses of an
agent, Mr.Copinsay, from Thule, whose job is to find and destroy the
ex-king...He does reach Goldenrod in the final chapter - where a surprise awaits
the reader and him." (a footnote by Dmitri Nabokov explains that at this
stage, March 1957, Ultima Thule had been inherited from Solus Rex, a novel
Nabokov was writing in France at the outbreak of World War II, and never
completed....All the real or imagined events of the Kingdom of Zembla and the
story of the ex-monarch are contained in a presumably mad commentator's notes to
a 999-line poem composed for the occasion by an invented
poet."
Were it not for Dmitri Nabokov's foot-note I would have endorsed
Carolyn Kunin's PF theory. VN's description of "his main creature,", happy
heterosexual king in exile surrounded by waxwings and a "l'if-less"
tree indicates that Nabokov's "main creature" was both Kinbote and John
Shade. The Kingdom of Zembla makes JFK become evasive and there are real and/or
imagined events taking place in it...
Concerning the research that went in John Shade's production,
there's a curious observation in VN's 1967 interview by Alfred Appel
Jr: "Everything that can be profitably
said about Count Godunov-Cherdyntsev's biography of
Chernyshevski has been said
by Koncheyev in The Gift. I can only add
that I devoted as much honest labor to the task of gathering the
material for
the Chernyshevski chapter as I did to the composing of
Shade's poem in Pale
Fire."
................................................................................................................................................................................
One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we
stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,
-- That particular
swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what
sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we
die, till tomorrow, for ever
You and I on the old bridge one
night.