Much of my Nabokovian work has been devoted to annotating sources and allusions related to Pale Fire. I have posted many of these to the Nabokov listserv over the years, but I am going to reconstitute some of them on this blog from time to time. Today’s entry falls more in the source category, as opposed to an allusion. Explain. When VN uses an allusion to some other literary work or historical incident, he wants us to recognize it and make something of the connection. Sources are different in that they lie more or less hidden behind the process of composition, and the author does not expect us, or require us, to recognize them or make sense of their connection to the text at hand. Nevertheless, source work can be revealing insomuch as it provides context for the sourced material and may help us understand some of the unstated elements that undergird an author’s use of the material.

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Matthew Roth