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Re: MR on why hide?
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Dear Matthew Roth,
Since I am one of the staunch doubters of the MPD theory, I'll butt in your discussion with those whose arguments you commented in the present message.
Despite all my arguments trying to describe Shade and Kinbote as different people, I'm still open to the supposition that CK and JS are all parts of one individual - but not to the relevance of MPD theory to understand their split ( as I too often remarked already). We are not forgetting that the novel itself was written by one individual. A genius, but should we also consider Shade or Kinbote as geniuses from what we gather of their writing as characters by the "real" genius' novel?
Nabokov was a dedicated scientist and I don't suppose he would not have chosen the MPD theory simply because it provided a basis for the development of the plot of Pale Fire ( as someone once suggested several messages ago). I wish you could provide us with more information about the MPD theorists and the confirmed cases of multiple personality studied and described in psychiatric texts ( I've only seen reference made to one, by CK - perhaps I missed all the others).
Even if Nabokov is correctly described by the "anti-polyphonic" Bakthinian metaphor, I think his achievement with the creation of both Shade and Kinbote, with their convincing differences and syntax, should come as a proof that he was able to deal with any kind of "overriding tendency to make explicit the presence of a creative consciousness behind every fictive construction" ( unless, of course, there were two of them ( I mean, two creative consciousnesses ) - but, as I said before, I may have misunderstood the point entirely, as I know nothing about Bakthin and linguistics...
You made a side note: "just before his passage about the childhood fit, he mentions seeing a "lemniscate" on the sand. It so happens that a lemniscus can mean either the infinity sign or a fiber connecting the brain to the central nervous system. Probably just a coincidence, but I thought I'd throw it out there.". A very interesting link that is quite new to me. Could you explain a bit more about this "fiber connecting the brain to the CNS"?
In item two, about "Just half a shade" and the quote "not only did Shade retain in his trance half of his identity but that he was also half a ghost.", I think it would be important to approach more explicitly this description to Shade's dream, where he saw his "dream/ghostly" self divided in two and his awakening with the "brown shoe" I'm
always harping about (actually, was it only one shoe?).
When Shade writes of a "conflagration" he is probably referring to one of his fits, but I cannot remember now where I wrote it in confirmation of CK's ideas, some time ago and among so many many postings. The doctor who saw him was Dr.Colt - and "a colt" has a specific meaning in English, doesn't it?
(By the way, I'm sorry now that I didn't mark, while reading, one very interesting remark ( I think it was Tiffany's) about the "insertion of a grain of factual evidence among fictive documentation", which reminded me of "Ada" ( the real rose among the artificial flowers Van Veen encounters in a shop) and the "brown shoe" and Coleridge's rose. What would the "real" brown shoe in the lawn indicate if it became "a grain of fact" in Shade's poem? )
In item 3 you wrote: "Most of the correspondences between Shade's poem (and life) and Kinbote's commentary have been laid out... the correspondences must be accounted for somehow. The MPD theory, for me, is a much simpler way of making those connections.". Would it, indeed?
Jansy Mello
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Since I am one of the staunch doubters of the MPD theory, I'll butt in your discussion with those whose arguments you commented in the present message.
Despite all my arguments trying to describe Shade and Kinbote as different people, I'm still open to the supposition that CK and JS are all parts of one individual - but not to the relevance of MPD theory to understand their split ( as I too often remarked already). We are not forgetting that the novel itself was written by one individual. A genius, but should we also consider Shade or Kinbote as geniuses from what we gather of their writing as characters by the "real" genius' novel?
Nabokov was a dedicated scientist and I don't suppose he would not have chosen the MPD theory simply because it provided a basis for the development of the plot of Pale Fire ( as someone once suggested several messages ago). I wish you could provide us with more information about the MPD theorists and the confirmed cases of multiple personality studied and described in psychiatric texts ( I've only seen reference made to one, by CK - perhaps I missed all the others).
Even if Nabokov is correctly described by the "anti-polyphonic" Bakthinian metaphor, I think his achievement with the creation of both Shade and Kinbote, with their convincing differences and syntax, should come as a proof that he was able to deal with any kind of "overriding tendency to make explicit the presence of a creative consciousness behind every fictive construction" ( unless, of course, there were two of them ( I mean, two creative consciousnesses ) - but, as I said before, I may have misunderstood the point entirely, as I know nothing about Bakthin and linguistics...
You made a side note: "just before his passage about the childhood fit, he mentions seeing a "lemniscate" on the sand. It so happens that a lemniscus can mean either the infinity sign or a fiber connecting the brain to the central nervous system. Probably just a coincidence, but I thought I'd throw it out there.". A very interesting link that is quite new to me. Could you explain a bit more about this "fiber connecting the brain to the CNS"?
In item two, about "Just half a shade" and the quote "not only did Shade retain in his trance half of his identity but that he was also half a ghost.", I think it would be important to approach more explicitly this description to Shade's dream, where he saw his "dream/ghostly" self divided in two and his awakening with the "brown shoe" I'm
always harping about (actually, was it only one shoe?).
When Shade writes of a "conflagration" he is probably referring to one of his fits, but I cannot remember now where I wrote it in confirmation of CK's ideas, some time ago and among so many many postings. The doctor who saw him was Dr.Colt - and "a colt" has a specific meaning in English, doesn't it?
(By the way, I'm sorry now that I didn't mark, while reading, one very interesting remark ( I think it was Tiffany's) about the "insertion of a grain of factual evidence among fictive documentation", which reminded me of "Ada" ( the real rose among the artificial flowers Van Veen encounters in a shop) and the "brown shoe" and Coleridge's rose. What would the "real" brown shoe in the lawn indicate if it became "a grain of fact" in Shade's poem? )
In item 3 you wrote: "Most of the correspondences between Shade's poem (and life) and Kinbote's commentary have been laid out... the correspondences must be accounted for somehow. The MPD theory, for me, is a much simpler way of making those connections.". Would it, indeed?
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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