Jerry,
I believe I tracked down the word versipel to the same authority as did Caroline, which would be Webster's 3rd. I've never seen the Yeatsian-sounding definition of a fairy child, or baby, that you advance. Your literal reading of the passage, though, seems correct to me, although I can't convince myself that versipel was meant by VN to conclude the sequence of morphing comb, shoehorn, spoon.
Without reviewing my previous note, I don't think I meant to say that Shade's versipel was necessarily demonic. That's why I used the half-serious examples from the Arabian Nights, Coleridge, and Burroughs. Dickey’s view on the poet as monster is true for some poets, but seems to me to be true for many more writer’s of fiction. In an article in The New Yorker, Joan Didion once wrote to the effect that what writers do, specifically essayists such as herself, is sell people out. To betray them. And she gave examples of a number of people who found themselves very sorry at having ever sat down and unburdened themselves for a journalist. A good number of people who knew Dickens — Leigh Hunt is the example most often given — were stunned and saddened to discover the use to which Dickens had put their acquaintance.
Is it possible that the “your favorite” line in the Foreword could be uttered by whatever is left of Kinbote/niktoB after he has fattened his botfly self -- and lost his soul -- in consuming Shade’s poem, he at last goes on to manipulate Shade’s memory and spirit from his lair in Cedarn, Utana? The obscene being at last brazenly croaks out these words to Sybil herself. Not that she is there or even in the vicinity to hear them. The dying Kibotkin dreamily emits words to his victim’s wife with the blind automaton-like action of a possessed worm.
Your examples of the structural flaws in the multiple personality disorder theory impressed me. The Occam’s Razor notion was mine and I think it has merit, but it will be understood most clearly by those who have worked at trying to write fiction and found how much is required by the primary business of creating a story and characters for which intelligent readers can willingly — briefly, but willingly — suspend their disbelief. The task of doing that and rigging the whole business with booby traps and land mines and various roundabouts and cul de sac is less likely of completion than some readers may suspect.
A VN story such as The Vane Sisters, with its contraption of initial capped messages, color reflections, and water shadows does not strike me as being as satisfactory as a story such as Signs and Symbols, in which whatever devices that exist are intrinsic to the story. Pale Fire comes as close as a great work can to the former type, but is saved and made a triumph by sharing with the latter type of story a reliance on a purely organic environment of flora, fauna, weather, life, death, memory, and the human soul.
Regards,
Andrew Brown
On 10/9/06 11:15 PM, "NABOKV-L" <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU> wrote:
> Dear Carolyn,
>
> A changeling is not a shapechanger, skinturner, etc.; it's
> a fairy baby stealthily exchanged by the fairies for a human
> baby they want.
>
> This is going to be a long message--I'm going to rebut your
> arguments and present objections to your theory that I think
> are insuperable. On "versipel", no one has mentioned the
> literal meaning of the passage. Shade rhymes and roams from
> room to room, absently holding a comb, a shoehorn, a spoon.
> He occasionally notices what he's holding, but he's been
> concentrating on his poetry, so he doesn't remember putting
> down the previous object and picking up the present one. Hence
> he whimsically says one object has turned into another,
> and just as whimsically calls it a shapechanger; since it's
> with him all the time as he writes, he calls it his muse,
> which brings in a pun on the /verse/ he's writing. (A
> versipel is by no means necessarily evil or demonic, by
> the way. The first sympathetic one who comes to mind is the
> Norwegian hero Bodhvar Bjarki, who turns into a bear at the
> climax of the Danish saga of Hrolf Kraki.)
>
> I don't see that anything more is /needed/. Of course in
> Nabokov we can always look for more. If the versipel is
> seen as demonic, then Andrew Brown's and others' explanation
> of Shade's muse making him write about Hazel's death seems
> reasonable to me. (For comparison with a real poet, James
> Dickey wrote an essay in which he says the poet becomes a
> monster--I think because the poet considers esthetically
> and technically what normal people consider only with bliss
> or grief.) And the versipel fits with the theme of
> metamorphosis, as Jansy mentioned, in particular with Botkin's
> metamorphosis into Kinbote. I'd see that more as a sign from
> Nabokov than from Shade.
>
> Speaking of Botkin, one of the strongest arguments against
> the G-K-S theory is that Nabokov endorsed the Botkin-Kinbote
> theory, according to Boyd's biography. And any references
> to Jekyll and Hyde fit the Botkin theory as well as yours.
>
> On "your favorite", that's certainly odd, but like George
> Shimanovich I took it as addressing the reader, who Kinbote
> may patronizingly assume to be a human-interest reader. It
> could also be addressing "good old Frank", though. In any
> case, I see no specific connection to Sybil--who may even
> understand her husband well enough, and find the second
> canto painful enough, to prefer Canto Three.
>
> You argue that the G-K-S story is "not at all unrealistic",
> but I'd like to amplify Andrew Brown's objections. In my
> slight knowledge of multiple-personality disorder, I've
> heard nothing about one personality claiming to talk to
> another, or inventing a story for another (Gradus), or
> struggling for control but describing it as a conversation
> or banging the garbage cans, or building an astonishingly
> well-developed delusional country, or making himself the
> butt of Pooterish irony, or inventing a conversation
> with someone who calls him insane, or inventing a red-herring
> identity for himself (Botkin), or being released by a stroke.
> Would Nabokov have thought such things happen?
>
> People (sorry, I forget who) have brought up things like
> Occam's Razor, and to me that's the other really strong
> objection to your theory. You have to reject almost of
> the text but turn a few words and phrases into gospel.
> Not just St. Augustine, but /every/ interaction between
> Kinbote and Shade can't have happened as stated. Same with
> every interaction between Kinbote and Sybil. Let me give
> as an example a part of the note to line 991 that I think
> you consider crucial.
>
> Kinbote describes the sounds of a summer evening on his and
> Shade's street--could be Shade's description.
>
> Kinbote mentions his plan to lure Shade over for conversation--
> couldn't happen. He describes sneaking up on Shade--couldn't
> happen.
>
> He describes Shade leaning his temple on his fist and looking
> "like a tipsy witch". In your theory, Kinbote is not looking
> at Shade, but that tipsiness is a vital clue. Kinbote
> remembers experiencing Shade's stroke and is reconstructing
> what it would have looked like if there had been an observer.
>
> Shade lifts his hand in greeting--couldn't have happened
> (there's no one to greet).
>
> Kinbote and Shade talk about the poem--couldn't have happened,
> but nonetheless what Shade says about his progress ("A few
> trifles to settle") is true, as is the envelope filled with
> cards (probably).
>
> "'Help me, Charlie, to get out of here," he pleaded. "Foot
> gone to sleep. Sybil is at a dinner meeting of her club.'"
> Couldn't have happened, but the statement about Sybil might
> be true, and by telling us that Shade said his foot fell
> asleep, Kinbote is revealing that his/Shade's leg is paralyzed
> by a stroke or what we now call a transient ischemic attack.
>
> Kinbote and Shade continue talking about the poem--couldn't
> have happened.
>
> So you reject most of the page and a half as complete delusion,
> but accept a few phrases as perfect truth. And you haven't
> mentioned any criterion for selecting those phrases except
> that they fit your theory. I don't see that as methodologically
> sound. You could select a different small fraction of the
> text, interpret as metaphorically as you do ("Foot fell asleep"
> means he's temporarily paralyzed by a stroke), and prove any
> other theory.
>
> Or to put it another way, once you've rejected almost all of
> the text, you're left with a Kinbote so immensely unreliable
> that you can't rely on anything he says. So just like the
> Shadean and Kinbotean theories, yours seems to me to lead to
> the conclusion that there's no real story. But it would be
> Kinbotean of me to bring in my theory in criticizing yours.
>
> With interest in your observations but no belief in your
> theory,
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
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