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Nabokov is notorious for having written‘Lolita’ ...
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Sandy Klein sends http://liberreview.blogspot.com/2012/01/pale-fire-vladimir-nabokov.html "Kinbote proceeds to reveal in his commentary a great deal about his own life whilst shedding little if no light on the genesis and meaning of the poem...Through the chaos of Kinbote’s magisterial self-importance Nabokov succeeds in presenting to the diligent reader a deftly worked and highly articulate tapestry of satire, comedy, farce and tragedy...Kinbote’s disappointment that Shade has not written the poem about Charles II of Zembla...does not inhibit him from telling us what Shade should have written and how he should have done it...."
JM: When I compared Nabokov's writings in "Pale Fire" and what he proffered in "The Art of Literature and Commonsense,"* I failed to realize that Nabokov might also be implying that, in fact, Kinbote's "non-utilitarian" footnotes and commentaries create a man's life (Kinbote's own, as King Charles of Zembla) and provide patterns that embellish the novel and John Shade's poem for an outsider's artistic eye.
The author as God, in this fictional work, is Kinbote and not John Shade, although we'd better consider CK a demiurge whereas Nabokov, of course, comes in as the Platonic "One,." as inaccessible as his abstract conception of a novel before he sets it down...
Alfred Appel Jr.mentions in "The Annotated Lolita" the tactics of involution ( "An involuted work turns in upon itself, is self-referential, conscious of its status as a fiction , and allégorique de lui-même - allegorial of itself, to use Mallarmé's description iof one of his own poems..") and how it is achieved in seven basic ways (parody, coincidence,patterning, allusion, the work-within-the-work, the staging of the novel, authorial voice.). He exhibits some concern about his own annotations when he adds: "This edition - now, as in 1970 - is analogous to what Pale Fire might have been like if poor John Shade had been given the opportunity to comment on Charles Kinbote's Commentary...But the annotator exists; he is a veteran and a granfather..., and has not been invented by Vladimir Nabokov." (Preface, xiii).However, his preoccupation is beside the point I'm trying to make here, since I cannot see AAJ in lieu of a Nabokovian demiurge.
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* - from the referred posting: "Charles Kinbote comments, on lines 939-40 from Shade's poem Pale Fire [ "Man's life as commentary to abstruse/Unfinished poem. Note for further use.]: "If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece." Years before, Vladimir Nabokov opined that “these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness” (Lectures on Literature, 374). My hunch is that Nabokov is making an observation about those patterns in human life which people, by themselves, cannot easily discern: they are non-utilitarian embellishments empowered to please an artistic Eye..."
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JM: When I compared Nabokov's writings in "Pale Fire" and what he proffered in "The Art of Literature and Commonsense,"* I failed to realize that Nabokov might also be implying that, in fact, Kinbote's "non-utilitarian" footnotes and commentaries create a man's life (Kinbote's own, as King Charles of Zembla) and provide patterns that embellish the novel and John Shade's poem for an outsider's artistic eye.
The author as God, in this fictional work, is Kinbote and not John Shade, although we'd better consider CK a demiurge whereas Nabokov, of course, comes in as the Platonic "One,." as inaccessible as his abstract conception of a novel before he sets it down...
Alfred Appel Jr.mentions in "The Annotated Lolita" the tactics of involution ( "An involuted work turns in upon itself, is self-referential, conscious of its status as a fiction , and allégorique de lui-même - allegorial of itself, to use Mallarmé's description iof one of his own poems..") and how it is achieved in seven basic ways (parody, coincidence,patterning, allusion, the work-within-the-work, the staging of the novel, authorial voice.). He exhibits some concern about his own annotations when he adds: "This edition - now, as in 1970 - is analogous to what Pale Fire might have been like if poor John Shade had been given the opportunity to comment on Charles Kinbote's Commentary...But the annotator exists; he is a veteran and a granfather..., and has not been invented by Vladimir Nabokov." (Preface, xiii).However, his preoccupation is beside the point I'm trying to make here, since I cannot see AAJ in lieu of a Nabokovian demiurge.
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* - from the referred posting: "Charles Kinbote comments, on lines 939-40 from Shade's poem Pale Fire [ "Man's life as commentary to abstruse/Unfinished poem. Note for further use.]: "If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece." Years before, Vladimir Nabokov opined that “these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness” (Lectures on Literature, 374). My hunch is that Nabokov is making an observation about those patterns in human life which people, by themselves, cannot easily discern: they are non-utilitarian embellishments empowered to please an artistic Eye..."
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/