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Fw: Fw: refinement to alternate reading of Pale Fire
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Friedman" <jerry_friedman@yahoo.com>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (183
lines) ------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> To: <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 2:34 PM
> Subject: Alternate Interpretation of Pale Fire
>
> ...
> > To the members of the Nabokov list,
> >
> > I would like to suggest that combatants BB and VNA consider an alternate
> > interpretation of Pale Fire, which may moot some of the disagreement
> between
> > them: I have come to the conclusion that the novel Pale Fire is another,
> > stranger case of Jekyll and Hyde (and Hyder). Shade, Kinbote and Gradus
> are
> > all the same person.
>
> Even if you have a Jekyll-and-Hyde theory, I see no reason to add Hyder.
> Shade writes a poem and Kinbote writes a commentary (apparently), but
> what's the evidence that Gradus is an independent personality who can do
> something instead of a figment like the drunk who sings about
> "Karlie-Garlie"?
>
> > If you read the novel suspecting this, some discrepancies begin to clear
> up.
> > The intrusion of the Kinbote voice into the Shade poem and the Shadey
> dream
> > in which Kinbote expresses toward Disa Shade's feelings for Sybil now
> begin
> > to make sense. Disa and Sybil are also one person. The birthdates are
> the
> > primary clue; the pun of Shade and degree is the second (the many grays
> > might make the reader think of Dorian Gray and note that Kinbote remains
> an
> > eternal adolescent while Shade ages and ages); and Kinbote's name,
> derived
> > from the maiden name of Mrs Samuel Shade (Caroline Lukin) is the
> important
> > third. Nabokov also makes an odd Jesuitical reference out of the middle
> > names of Shade & Kinbote (Francis Xavier, not the only saint in the
> novel).
>
> Thanks! I missed both of those name connections.
>
> However, in general, there's no need to postulate any special explanation
> for anything in Kinbote's writing that resembles something in the poem.
> Kinbote has read the poem.
>
> The emotional strength of the Disa-Sybil connection may need explanation,
> though. Brian Boyd has provided a neat one. Without bringing in the
> supernatural (justified as it may be), one can also guess that in going
> mad, Botkin left behind responsibilities. These abandoned
> responsibilities could account for his strong reaction to Frost's
> "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". If they include a wife or female
> lover, they could also account for his dreams of Disa. But this is just
> speculation. The resemblance between Sybil and Disa (also in the note to
> lines 47-48) can simply result from Kinbote's admiration of Shade and the
> influence of the poem. Incidentally, it's less perfect than Kinbote tells
> us, since Disa's hair is "coal-black" (I have to go tutor some people or
> I'd find the reference) and Sybil's is "dark silky brown" (line 264).
>
> > Once the reader suspects tht Shade, Kinbote and Gradus are not separate
> > entities, he can begin to make out the plot of the novel which no one,
> so
> > far as I know, has attempted:
>
> People must have done it better than I'm about to, but here I am with free
> time, and "the plot" has been on my mind since your post. This is a
> Gradus-is-Grey,
> Kinbote-is-Botkin-but-otherwise-gets-the-benefit-of-the-doubt version
> (which I don't really believe), with as many controversies skipped over as
> possible.
>
> V. Botkin, an emigre Russian academic, goes insane and believes himself to
> be Karl or Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, the deposed king of Zembla
> living in exile as Dr. Charles X. Kinbote. He teaches at Wordsmith
> College, not in the Russian Department, in New Wye, Appalachia. On Feb.
> 5, 1959, he moves into a house that Judge Goldsworth and his improbable
> family have vacated for the judge's sabbatical. The house is close to
> that of John Shade, a poet and professor, and his wife, the former Sybil
> Irondell, a woman of letters; they have recently lost their daughter,
> Hazel. Kinbote (as I'll call him) strikes up a parasitic friendship with
> Shade and on their occasional rambles recounts the delusional story of
> King Charles and his escape from Zembla after a Soviet-backed revolution,
> urging Shade to write a poem about it.
>
> On the night of July 2-3, Shade begins a long poem in heroic couplets that
> at some point he decides to call "Pale Fire". Kinbote learns a few days
> later that the shades will soon spend a few weeks at a colleague's ranch
> near Cedarn, Utana, and rents a cabin nearby for the same time. Still in
> New Wye on the evening of July 21, at line 999 of his poem and all but
> finished, Shade agrees to cross to Kinbote's house for a celebratory drink
> and dinner. Kinbote relieves Shade of his index-card manuscript. As the
> two reach Kinbote's (Goldsworth's) entrance, a madman named Jack Grey
> mistakes Shade for Judge Goldsworth, who he resembles, and shoots him in
> revenge for Goldsworth's sentencing Grey to the Institute for the Criminal
> Insane. Kinbote's gardener subdues Grey with a shovel and then gives the
> police and Sybil Shade the impression that Kinbote had tried to shield
> Shade from the bullets. In tearful gratitude, Sybil accedes to Kinbote's
> request that he be allowed to edit the poem, which he thinks is about
> Zembla.
>
> Kinbote soon feels that he has to leave New Wye (possibly after
> interviewing Grey in jail). He stops in New York to find a publisher for
> the poem and in Chicago to interview Shade's former typist, Jane Provost,
> who gives him a good deal of information about her late friend Hazel Shade
> and Hazel's contacts with the supernatural. Kinbote ends up in his cabin
> in Cedarn, a lonely crank working on his _apparatus_. His monstrously
> self-centered Foreword, Commentary, and Index tell the story summarized
> above and spend a good deal of time on his Zemblan past (even though
> there's little trace of it in the poem) and on a new delusion: that Jack
> Grey was actually Jakob Gradus, an assassin working for the new government
> of Zembla and aiming for Kinbote, not Shade. On October 19 he ends his
> work and the next day apparently kills himself. I trust the readers have
> enjoyed this precis.
>
> > The Plot of the novel
> ...
>
> > The word "stroke" first appears in Kinbotes note to "a clockwork toy"
> (line
> > 143) and the stroke itself is quite wonderfully and wildly described in
> the
> > following note (to line 149).
>
> I must have missed that.
>
> > Shade's Aunt Maud, remember, was similarly
> > afflicted and Kinbote has been complaining of headaches.
>
> An interesting point.
>
> > With Shade
> > partially incapacitated, Kinbote and Shade struggle to complete the poem
> > (teste the "Corrected Copy" of lines 949-999 with their "devastating
> > erasures and cataclysmic insertions" as described in the Preface).
>
> This indicates only that Shade is struggling, as well he might.
> ...
>
> > Nabokov's primary literary reference is to RLS's Strange Case of Dr
> Jekyll
> > and Mr Hyde (note that Shade is always "Mr" and Kinbote appends "Dr" to
> his
> > name in the index).
>
> Shade is usually "Shade". Where is there a "Mr."?
> ...
>
> > p.s. I almost forgot - who is Botkin? Answer: Nikto b'.
>
> Eh? I know it's a handicap, but I don't know any Russian (if that's what
> that is).
>
> --- "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> > To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
> > Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 8:23 AM
> > Subject: refinement to alternate reading of Pale Fire
> ...
>
> > > The preface reference to "Canto two, your favorite" is an intrusion of
> > > Shade's voice, and refers to Sybil.
>
> My favorite of your suggestions so far.
>
> > > Also I think I failed to mention the interesting confusion expressed
> > in
> > the
> > > "Shade" entry in the index in which "he" sometimes refers to Shade and
> > > sometimes to Kinbote.
>
> The pronoun references are egocentric but I don't find them to be
> confused.
> ...
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
> http://finance.yahoo.com
>
From: "Jerry Friedman" <jerry_friedman@yahoo.com>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (183
lines) ------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> To: <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 2:34 PM
> Subject: Alternate Interpretation of Pale Fire
>
> ...
> > To the members of the Nabokov list,
> >
> > I would like to suggest that combatants BB and VNA consider an alternate
> > interpretation of Pale Fire, which may moot some of the disagreement
> between
> > them: I have come to the conclusion that the novel Pale Fire is another,
> > stranger case of Jekyll and Hyde (and Hyder). Shade, Kinbote and Gradus
> are
> > all the same person.
>
> Even if you have a Jekyll-and-Hyde theory, I see no reason to add Hyder.
> Shade writes a poem and Kinbote writes a commentary (apparently), but
> what's the evidence that Gradus is an independent personality who can do
> something instead of a figment like the drunk who sings about
> "Karlie-Garlie"?
>
> > If you read the novel suspecting this, some discrepancies begin to clear
> up.
> > The intrusion of the Kinbote voice into the Shade poem and the Shadey
> dream
> > in which Kinbote expresses toward Disa Shade's feelings for Sybil now
> begin
> > to make sense. Disa and Sybil are also one person. The birthdates are
> the
> > primary clue; the pun of Shade and degree is the second (the many grays
> > might make the reader think of Dorian Gray and note that Kinbote remains
> an
> > eternal adolescent while Shade ages and ages); and Kinbote's name,
> derived
> > from the maiden name of Mrs Samuel Shade (Caroline Lukin) is the
> important
> > third. Nabokov also makes an odd Jesuitical reference out of the middle
> > names of Shade & Kinbote (Francis Xavier, not the only saint in the
> novel).
>
> Thanks! I missed both of those name connections.
>
> However, in general, there's no need to postulate any special explanation
> for anything in Kinbote's writing that resembles something in the poem.
> Kinbote has read the poem.
>
> The emotional strength of the Disa-Sybil connection may need explanation,
> though. Brian Boyd has provided a neat one. Without bringing in the
> supernatural (justified as it may be), one can also guess that in going
> mad, Botkin left behind responsibilities. These abandoned
> responsibilities could account for his strong reaction to Frost's
> "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". If they include a wife or female
> lover, they could also account for his dreams of Disa. But this is just
> speculation. The resemblance between Sybil and Disa (also in the note to
> lines 47-48) can simply result from Kinbote's admiration of Shade and the
> influence of the poem. Incidentally, it's less perfect than Kinbote tells
> us, since Disa's hair is "coal-black" (I have to go tutor some people or
> I'd find the reference) and Sybil's is "dark silky brown" (line 264).
>
> > Once the reader suspects tht Shade, Kinbote and Gradus are not separate
> > entities, he can begin to make out the plot of the novel which no one,
> so
> > far as I know, has attempted:
>
> People must have done it better than I'm about to, but here I am with free
> time, and "the plot" has been on my mind since your post. This is a
> Gradus-is-Grey,
> Kinbote-is-Botkin-but-otherwise-gets-the-benefit-of-the-doubt version
> (which I don't really believe), with as many controversies skipped over as
> possible.
>
> V. Botkin, an emigre Russian academic, goes insane and believes himself to
> be Karl or Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, the deposed king of Zembla
> living in exile as Dr. Charles X. Kinbote. He teaches at Wordsmith
> College, not in the Russian Department, in New Wye, Appalachia. On Feb.
> 5, 1959, he moves into a house that Judge Goldsworth and his improbable
> family have vacated for the judge's sabbatical. The house is close to
> that of John Shade, a poet and professor, and his wife, the former Sybil
> Irondell, a woman of letters; they have recently lost their daughter,
> Hazel. Kinbote (as I'll call him) strikes up a parasitic friendship with
> Shade and on their occasional rambles recounts the delusional story of
> King Charles and his escape from Zembla after a Soviet-backed revolution,
> urging Shade to write a poem about it.
>
> On the night of July 2-3, Shade begins a long poem in heroic couplets that
> at some point he decides to call "Pale Fire". Kinbote learns a few days
> later that the shades will soon spend a few weeks at a colleague's ranch
> near Cedarn, Utana, and rents a cabin nearby for the same time. Still in
> New Wye on the evening of July 21, at line 999 of his poem and all but
> finished, Shade agrees to cross to Kinbote's house for a celebratory drink
> and dinner. Kinbote relieves Shade of his index-card manuscript. As the
> two reach Kinbote's (Goldsworth's) entrance, a madman named Jack Grey
> mistakes Shade for Judge Goldsworth, who he resembles, and shoots him in
> revenge for Goldsworth's sentencing Grey to the Institute for the Criminal
> Insane. Kinbote's gardener subdues Grey with a shovel and then gives the
> police and Sybil Shade the impression that Kinbote had tried to shield
> Shade from the bullets. In tearful gratitude, Sybil accedes to Kinbote's
> request that he be allowed to edit the poem, which he thinks is about
> Zembla.
>
> Kinbote soon feels that he has to leave New Wye (possibly after
> interviewing Grey in jail). He stops in New York to find a publisher for
> the poem and in Chicago to interview Shade's former typist, Jane Provost,
> who gives him a good deal of information about her late friend Hazel Shade
> and Hazel's contacts with the supernatural. Kinbote ends up in his cabin
> in Cedarn, a lonely crank working on his _apparatus_. His monstrously
> self-centered Foreword, Commentary, and Index tell the story summarized
> above and spend a good deal of time on his Zemblan past (even though
> there's little trace of it in the poem) and on a new delusion: that Jack
> Grey was actually Jakob Gradus, an assassin working for the new government
> of Zembla and aiming for Kinbote, not Shade. On October 19 he ends his
> work and the next day apparently kills himself. I trust the readers have
> enjoyed this precis.
>
> > The Plot of the novel
> ...
>
> > The word "stroke" first appears in Kinbotes note to "a clockwork toy"
> (line
> > 143) and the stroke itself is quite wonderfully and wildly described in
> the
> > following note (to line 149).
>
> I must have missed that.
>
> > Shade's Aunt Maud, remember, was similarly
> > afflicted and Kinbote has been complaining of headaches.
>
> An interesting point.
>
> > With Shade
> > partially incapacitated, Kinbote and Shade struggle to complete the poem
> > (teste the "Corrected Copy" of lines 949-999 with their "devastating
> > erasures and cataclysmic insertions" as described in the Preface).
>
> This indicates only that Shade is struggling, as well he might.
> ...
>
> > Nabokov's primary literary reference is to RLS's Strange Case of Dr
> Jekyll
> > and Mr Hyde (note that Shade is always "Mr" and Kinbote appends "Dr" to
> his
> > name in the index).
>
> Shade is usually "Shade". Where is there a "Mr."?
> ...
>
> > p.s. I almost forgot - who is Botkin? Answer: Nikto b'.
>
> Eh? I know it's a handicap, but I don't know any Russian (if that's what
> that is).
>
> --- "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> > To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
> > Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 8:23 AM
> > Subject: refinement to alternate reading of Pale Fire
> ...
>
> > > The preface reference to "Canto two, your favorite" is an intrusion of
> > > Shade's voice, and refers to Sybil.
>
> My favorite of your suggestions so far.
>
> > > Also I think I failed to mention the interesting confusion expressed
> > in
> > the
> > > "Shade" entry in the index in which "he" sometimes refers to Shade and
> > > sometimes to Kinbote.
>
> The pronoun references are egocentric but I don't find them to be
> confused.
> ...
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
> http://finance.yahoo.com
>