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Re: from Ron Rosenbaum re "Pale Fire" & EDNote
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Sam Gwynn: "I'm not going to reread Brian's PF book ..., but, to recapitulate, he has never denied Shade as the author of "Pale Fire" (the poem)...It's clear that Hazel Shade was, when alive, interested in making contact with the "other world," ... It also seems clear that the poltergeist events (again recreated by CK from Shade's account) were related to her..."The Vane Sisters" is a VN story that contains a "message" from the other side. Whether or not VN actually believed in such matters is beside the point...The Arion Press edition, as I noted in an earlier post, was a limited (fewer than 300 copies) fine press edition that sold for $600, aimed at the collectors' market. The Gingko project is not like this at all..."
JM: I read B.Boyd's and Priscilla Meyer's books on "Pale Fire" from beginning to end and, later, often came back to them for reference. Now, I'm afraid I have a scattered recollection of the gist of their ideas for it recquires a new, complete, re-reading of both. Without dwelling only on the poem, "Pale Fire," Meyer's focus seems to have been chiefly laid on Nabokov's grief and mourning, related to his father's assassination (according to her, for a time at least, Nabokov believed he'd be reunited to his father's ghost in the hereafter) and change from writing Russian towards the English. Similar themes may be followed in the poem when it is independently read, but they're also to be found in the body of Kinbote's Zemblan reconstruction and its link to King Charles II restauration.
I understand that Nabokov simultaneously mocks spiritualistic beliefs in ghosts (as we find in "The Vane Sisters" and the self-reference in their message), without wholy abandoning them ( indications about this more serious aspects are disguised in his texts). In the case of Pale Fire, the poem, I think that several indications related to the serious aspects concerning his belief in "ghosts" may be lost, if Shade's verses are read separately from the novel. Nevertheless to be able enjoy the poem for its artistic merits, the recognition of VN's, biographical, bereavements ( his father's death, his disguised faith) also present in his poem (then related to a father's grief for his daughter's suicide) is not fundamental.
While I was after a quote from RLSK (concerning the mockery of serious emotions) I found some related references to ghosts ( here only associated to RLSK) which might still be of interest to the List.* I haven't researched these items with the intention to bring them up to the list: I merely fished them out from my archives.
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* Sebastian Knight’s parodies, and Nabokov’s own, move forward from the comic into “serious emotion…'a clown developing wings, an angel mimicking a tumbler pigeon' ”(91) However, it is often difficult to separate satirical elements from their transcendental dimension in order to witness the transformation of a “tumbler pigeon into an angel,” or “a clown develop[ing] wings.” Priscilla Meyer considers that in RLSK “Nabokov casts his own transition from Russian to English as a metaphorical death […] he conceals among his new set of ‘implied associations and traditions’ works that ponder his abiding concern, the survival of the spirit after bodily death” (Anglophonia and Optimysticism: Sebastian Knight’s Bookshelves, Festschrift to Honor David Bethea on his 60th Birthday, 2 parts, ed. Lazar Fleishman, Alexander Ospovat, Stanford Slavic Studies, 2008, part 2, 212-226.) In an earlier article she has already mentioned “the complexity of Nabokov's careful construction of themes of magic and the transcendent." (Black and Violet Words, Despair and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight as Doubles, P. Meyer, NS #4, 38, n.5, p.47). ..Although Sebastian’s parodies shy away from resurrecting the past or from any belief on spiritual rebirth, Nabokov’s RLSK is a novel devoted to transcending an “essential drama” (18), a quest for a lost person and unexpected losses (his father’s recent assassination in Berlin, his exile and his farewell to Irina Guadanini.). Doubtlessly, as Priscilla Meyer clearly asserts, Nabokov’s art demands annotation to enable the reader to “identify Nabokov’s mode of transforming life into art, and hence his principles of literary creation” (Vladimir Nabokov, Annotating vs Interpreting Nabokov, Actes du colloque, Cycnos, 24, n.1, 2006, Nice.)...Sweeney reminds us of V’s belief “that Sebastian’s life and art will reveal to him the very meaning of existence, the “absolute solution” (180), a faith the reader cannot easily share for, while one of its storylines express "the modernist tenets of completion, wholeness, and artistic unity", the other "fosters a self-reflexive awareness that that sense of unity is unstable, unreliable, and subjective."[Cycnos | S.Sweeney: Volume 12 n°2 NABOKOV : At the Crossroads of Modernism and Postmodernism - | The V-Shaped Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon
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JM: I read B.Boyd's and Priscilla Meyer's books on "Pale Fire" from beginning to end and, later, often came back to them for reference. Now, I'm afraid I have a scattered recollection of the gist of their ideas for it recquires a new, complete, re-reading of both. Without dwelling only on the poem, "Pale Fire," Meyer's focus seems to have been chiefly laid on Nabokov's grief and mourning, related to his father's assassination (according to her, for a time at least, Nabokov believed he'd be reunited to his father's ghost in the hereafter) and change from writing Russian towards the English. Similar themes may be followed in the poem when it is independently read, but they're also to be found in the body of Kinbote's Zemblan reconstruction and its link to King Charles II restauration.
I understand that Nabokov simultaneously mocks spiritualistic beliefs in ghosts (as we find in "The Vane Sisters" and the self-reference in their message), without wholy abandoning them ( indications about this more serious aspects are disguised in his texts). In the case of Pale Fire, the poem, I think that several indications related to the serious aspects concerning his belief in "ghosts" may be lost, if Shade's verses are read separately from the novel. Nevertheless to be able enjoy the poem for its artistic merits, the recognition of VN's, biographical, bereavements ( his father's death, his disguised faith) also present in his poem (then related to a father's grief for his daughter's suicide) is not fundamental.
While I was after a quote from RLSK (concerning the mockery of serious emotions) I found some related references to ghosts ( here only associated to RLSK) which might still be of interest to the List.* I haven't researched these items with the intention to bring them up to the list: I merely fished them out from my archives.
.....................................................................................................................................
* Sebastian Knight’s parodies, and Nabokov’s own, move forward from the comic into “serious emotion…'a clown developing wings, an angel mimicking a tumbler pigeon' ”(91) However, it is often difficult to separate satirical elements from their transcendental dimension in order to witness the transformation of a “tumbler pigeon into an angel,” or “a clown develop[ing] wings.” Priscilla Meyer considers that in RLSK “Nabokov casts his own transition from Russian to English as a metaphorical death […] he conceals among his new set of ‘implied associations and traditions’ works that ponder his abiding concern, the survival of the spirit after bodily death” (Anglophonia and Optimysticism: Sebastian Knight’s Bookshelves, Festschrift to Honor David Bethea on his 60th Birthday, 2 parts, ed. Lazar Fleishman, Alexander Ospovat, Stanford Slavic Studies, 2008, part 2, 212-226.) In an earlier article she has already mentioned “the complexity of Nabokov's careful construction of themes of magic and the transcendent." (Black and Violet Words, Despair and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight as Doubles, P. Meyer, NS #4, 38, n.5, p.47). ..Although Sebastian’s parodies shy away from resurrecting the past or from any belief on spiritual rebirth, Nabokov’s RLSK is a novel devoted to transcending an “essential drama” (18), a quest for a lost person and unexpected losses (his father’s recent assassination in Berlin, his exile and his farewell to Irina Guadanini.). Doubtlessly, as Priscilla Meyer clearly asserts, Nabokov’s art demands annotation to enable the reader to “identify Nabokov’s mode of transforming life into art, and hence his principles of literary creation” (Vladimir Nabokov, Annotating vs Interpreting Nabokov, Actes du colloque, Cycnos, 24, n.1, 2006, Nice.)...Sweeney reminds us of V’s belief “that Sebastian’s life and art will reveal to him the very meaning of existence, the “absolute solution” (180), a faith the reader cannot easily share for, while one of its storylines express "the modernist tenets of completion, wholeness, and artistic unity", the other "fosters a self-reflexive awareness that that sense of unity is unstable, unreliable, and subjective."[Cycnos | S.Sweeney: Volume 12 n°2 NABOKOV : At the Crossroads of Modernism and Postmodernism - | The V-Shaped Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/