Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023074, Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:30:24 -0400

Subject
Re: Pale Fire Commentary on Line 130
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Date
Body
Shade, being an American, is probably talking about basketball and baseball
as childhood/school sports, soccer being pretty rare in the US at the time
(early 1900s when he was a child). Kinbote complete misses the baseball
reference in the "Chapman's homer" line. Cricket was certainly widely played
throughout the British empire early in the century, and the well-traveled CK
would have at least have been familiar with it. VN, of course, played soccer
(football) at Cambridge, and I assume he played it as a child, along with
tennis, which figures in several of the novels (Lolita, Transparent Things).
CK's sport of choice is ping-pong.

In a message dated 7/18/2012 12:34:57 PM Central Daylight Time,
ba@TAXBAR.COM writes:
>
>
> Hi
>
>
>
> I’m new to this list – please forgive me if what follows is trivial or
> unoriginal.
>
>
>
> I have been an obsessive reader of PF on and off for years and have
> absorbed some of the academic literature on it, but obviously not all.
>
>
>
> I have a couple of observations on the commentary to line 130 (“I never
> bounced a ball or swung a bat”).
>
>
>
> 1. Kinbote’s references to soccer and cricket (first line of this
> commentary)
>
>
>
> I have seen comments to the effect that this shows how out of touch
> Kinbote is with American sports, but surely there is something more complicated
> going on here. By saying that he “never excelled in soccer and cricket”
> Kinbote is implying that he (and/or Charles Xavier) actually played both
> sports.
>
>
>
> Cricket was (and largely still is) a game played in Great Britain and
> territories of the former British Empire. How likely is it that cricket would
> have been played in Zembla in the years when Kinbote/Charles Xavier was
> growing up – the 1920s and early 1930s? Given Zembla’s location in northern
> Europe and apparently loose ties with the English-speaking world (see the
> references to English teaching), the answer is surely that it is very
> unlikely.
>
>
>
> The later reference in the commentary to line 130 to Oleg being the best
> centre-forward in his school is soccer-related, of course.
>
>
>
> So why the reference to cricket? The later reference to the insect in
> this part of the commentary (“A cricket cricked.”) can’t be the only reason
> for using “cricket” in its sporting sense. Why would Kinbote, writing in
> America, ever think to mention a sport unknown to virtually all American
> readers in 1959?
>
>
>
> I think that there is a class-related theme here. Cricket in England was,
> up until the 1950s, a game where both professionals and amateurs played at
> the highest level. By convention, the captain of the English national
> team was always an amateur. Oxford and Cambridge Universities fielded entirely
> student teams which competed with some success at the highest national
> level. One of the most important matches in the annual cricket calendar was
> the “Gentlemen v. Players” match at Lords. The only people who could afford
> to play as amateurs were the sons of the upper middle and upper classes.
> This did occasionally included royalty. For example, K. S. Ranjitsinhji
> (later the Maharaja of Nawangar) played for Cambridge University and England in
> the 1890s and 1900s. Nabokov must have known about all of this from his
> Cambridge days. C. B. Fry, a noted Oxford and England cricketer, is said to
> have been offered (and refused) the throne of Albania.
>
>
>
> So if cricket was a “high class” sport, the apparent fact that
> Kinbote/the young Charles Xavier played it would perhaps fit in with the persona
> that Kinbote projects throughout the work.
>
>
>
> From a class perspective, “soccer” and “rugger”(see below) were
> originally both sports played by the upper classes (but not exclusively) – but by
> the start of the twentieth century, “soccer” was almost exclusively a
> working class game in England – “rugger” was almost exclusively the game
> played by the upper classes.
>
>
>
> So it’s curious that Kinbote/Charles Xavier (and presumably all high
> class young Zemblans at the time) played the more upper class cricket in the
> summer but the more working class “soccer” in the winter.
>
>
>
> I find the use of the word “soccer” interesting too. Speakers of
> American English may find nothing unnatural in this, apart from its incongruity in
> the context of what Shade was actually implying in line 130 of the poem,
> but to speakers of British English the word strikes a false note. Nabokov
> would have been aware that in British usage “soccer” was used to distinguish
> “association football” from “rugby football” – “rugger” - but by the
> 1950s British usage was to call the round ball game “football” and the oval
> ball game “rugby”. The word “soccer” had become relegated to slang usage
> only.
>
>
>
>
>
> 2. “Escalier Dérobé”
>
>
>
> I am surely not the first person to connect this phrase (in the paragraph
> that begins with Beauchamp and Campbell’s game of chess and ends with the
> boys moaning like doves) with Victor Hugo’s Hernani? But if I am, then
> here goes:
>
>
>
> Hernani (1830) is (partly) concerned with a plot to kill the king of Spain
> – Don Carlos.
>
>
>
> The play opens:-
>
>
>
> Serait-ce déjà lui? – C’est bien à l’escalier/dérobé.
>
>
>
> It was at this point on the play’s opening night that a riot broke out at
> the Comédie Française because the classical faction in the audience was
> outraged by Hugo’s use of enjambement.
>
>
>
> So, in addition to the portrait of Iris Acht and the “green-carpeted steps
> ” (as in “green room”), we have an indication that there will be a
> theatre at the end of the secret passage and angry voices! And an allusion to a
> plot to kill a king called Charles.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Barrie Akin
>
>
>

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