Jansy Mello comments C.Kunin's "I just heard a funny
story about Beethoven and his sixth symphony ("The Pastoral") that reminded me
of our VN in regards to artistic misdirection ...The first movement of the
Pastoral ends with a short passage that clearly depicts a duet between a cuckoo
played by a clarinet and a warbler of some kind played by the flute. According
to Alan Chapman, the host of a morning program on KUSC (kusc.org/playlist/),
when asked which bird he had in mind when he wrote the flute part, LvB insisted
that he was not referring to birds at all. Anyone with ears would know he was
lying, but according to Mr Chapman, Beethoven had himself actually marked the
passage in the score with the pseudo-English word 'boids'. "
It's a charming and funny story about Beethoven's
'birds,' artistic misdirections and imitation (although in this
case the right word eludes me: would they be considered "musical
transpostions"?) It fits in with our present discussion about
take-offs, rip-offs and the additional theme of the "parodies."
Consequently, C.Kunin's second, apparently unrelated posting,
about "Shade is always 'Mr' and Kinbote is always 'Dr.'
," inviting A.S to "come up with an instance in which Shade is
'Dr' and/or one in which Kinbote is 'Mr' - for, in this case, he'd
"have gotten me and I shall have to throw myself under a bus or
something" - warmed me up to her theories concerning R.L.Stevenson's
story. If we slightly change our perspective we may accept the idea
that, instead of merely reproducing a pattern in order to point
to R.S.Stevenson's J&H (with the doctor/monster split
personalities), Nabokov might have entertained second thoughts about
his original plot and then he settled for parodying the metamorphosis
engendered by R.L.S's "scientific" potions.
I've just begun reading Thomas Karshan's introduction to his edition of
V.Nabokov's "Selected Poems," where he writes: "...Pale Fire, in which
Nabokov establishes an apparently absolute contrast between his two protagonists
- the unhappy, errant Russian exile Kinbote, and John Shade, the sunny New
England poet...only to undermine it by indicating a series of affinities so
intricate that it many readers have been led to believe that Shade and Kinbote
are two opposite facets of the same person."(2012,xxii).
When Nabokov initially mentioned his new novel (in "Selected
Letters"), he hadn't yet effectuated the division between Shade and
Kinbote (their traits belonged to one single charater, a mad ex-king in
exile). Later on (cf. "Selected Letters"), he attempted to get Shade's
poem published independently, even before he'd finished writing CK's
commentary. At this point the idea of organizing elements to
form an additional parody to RLS J&H, might have
provided an almost irresistible appeal to Nabokov's fine sense of humor
concerning the pseudo-psychanalytic theories concerning split
personalities then in vogue [?]* The
differentiating emphasis related to "dr' and "mr" wouldn't have demanded a
lot of alterations to the already existing structure...
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................
* the present paragraph has not been checked for correct references, dates
and historical precision, which would be
welcome!.