Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] [QUERIES] Kinbote's chronologies and addresses
From
Date
Body
Jim Twiggs [off-List to JM's ...It had seemed to me, at first, that Kinbote was addressing an imaginary audience - the doctor* - in a Humbert-like way although, in this case, his arguments swayed on behalf of the "half man...half mad" Gradus. For me the intrusion of this "voice" remains unexplained: does it indicate anything other than Kinbote's own madness?]: "I believe I addressed your question in my contributions to the list dated May 2, 2010 (VN's Self-Reference in PF) and September 8, 2010 (Botkin). These are fairly long posts, so I didn't want to call attention to them on the List in case they don't contain anything that's of interest to you. Mary Bellino's contribution of October 29, 2006 (Bookishness, "metastory," and the timeline of PF), might also be of interest. I myself lean to the view that, from the point of view of believability, only a vanity press would have published Kinbote/Botkin's book, in which case normal scholarly standards would not apply. In any case, I can best make sense of the ending of the commentary (starting with c.949) by assuming that Kinbote/Botkin is not, and may never have been, in Cedarn but is rather in a madhouse."
JM: It's often complicated to check all the entries, inspite of google and search-tools at our disposal. Actually, my queries arose as casual questions while I was searching into a different matter, mostly related to Gradus. The three Nab-L postings from 2010, which Jim Twiggs reminded me of, are an excellent "open answer" to my first query. They've added important information - and that'll need to be re-addressed in the future.
The Nab-L archives carry the complete texts. I'm posting a few extracts to consider here only the elements that answer or illuminate my question or add a new edge to it.
These elements are:
Jim Twiggs: (1) "Kinbote, after mentioning a doctor and then referring to the doctor, finally addresses a doctor directly--suggesting, perhaps, that he is not in a cabin in Cedarn but rather in an asylum. The Cedarn story, on this reading, may be as fictional as the Zembla story. It is at this point that almost everything in the Commentary, much of which (quite apart from the Zembla story) is hard to accept anyway, begins to crumble..." ;
Jim Twiggs (2) "... a person living out a delusion might well be aware, at least part of the time (and regardless of how one might conceptualize the matter) of his "real" identity. The first passage, being a quick slip of the mask, is easy to overlook; the second, at the very end of the Commentary, is as close to being a key to the book as we are likely to find."
Jim Twiggs (3): "(Dowling) goes on to say that in Pale Fire, the Nabokov-like narrator is telling the story as a voice that, if it survives, will have exactly the same status as John Shade and Kinbote's. Here, it seems to me, he is either wrong or his point is trivial...In Pale Fire as most of us read it, Shade, Kinbote, and Jack Grey are on the same fictive level. Gradus, however is not on this level. Gradus is a character within Kinbote's story...If the N-LN's sole function is to be Nabokov's stand-in as creator of the novel, this is only slightly more interesting than Hitchcock strolling into one of his own movies...structurally it is trivial. All it does is push Kinbote, Shade, Grey, and Gradus up one notch on the fictive scale. All the old questions remain untouched.The second possibility is that the N-LN and Kinbote are one and the same. In this version, the N-LN is the ground-level personality whose insanity lies in thinking he is Charles the Beloved, the deposed king of Zembla. It is the N-LN, so conceived, who comes into view when the Kinbote mask slips." ..."In the second passage Kinbote goes in and out of his two identities. In describing a possible play, he gives away the plot of the novel (as he sees it) and shows a clear awareness that he is a deranged figment of his (as it turns out, Botkin's) own imagination. In the final possibility (and I believe the one that has come true)-- "I may huddle and groan in a madhouse"
Mary Bellino: "I assume a fairly straightforward, "traditional" reading of PF, positing an insane Kinbote who may or may not be V. Botkin, whose Zemblan life is a figment of his imagination but whose reportage of _events_ in New Wye is reliable (he did receive a note that said "You have h.......s real bad") even though his _interpretation_ of these events is wildly and transparently inaccurate (the note referred to halitosis, not hallucinations). This reading may also be extended to cover the Shade-as-author theory, if we assume that Shade went to extraordinary lengths to create verisimilitude in the account of the writing and publishing of "Kinbote's" commentary."
(this is the first instalment, part II will be submitted to our Eds soon. I wish the postings were briefer.)
..........................................................
* "Gradus is now much nearer to us in space and time...his human incompleteness ...we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad" and "My own opinion, which I would like the doctor to confirm, is that the French sandwich was engaged in an intestinal internecine war..." Compare to Shade: "But, Doctor, I was dead!/ He smiled. "Not quite: just half a shade." Or Kinbote's note to it: "Another fine example of our poet's special brand of combinational magic. The subtle pun here turns on two additional meanings of "shade"...The doctor is made to suggest that not only did Shade retain in his trance half of his identity but that he was also half a ghost. Knowing the particular medical man who treated my friend at the time, I venture to add that he is far too stodgy to have displayed any such wit."
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/
JM: It's often complicated to check all the entries, inspite of google and search-tools at our disposal. Actually, my queries arose as casual questions while I was searching into a different matter, mostly related to Gradus. The three Nab-L postings from 2010, which Jim Twiggs reminded me of, are an excellent "open answer" to my first query. They've added important information - and that'll need to be re-addressed in the future.
The Nab-L archives carry the complete texts. I'm posting a few extracts to consider here only the elements that answer or illuminate my question or add a new edge to it.
These elements are:
Jim Twiggs: (1) "Kinbote, after mentioning a doctor and then referring to the doctor, finally addresses a doctor directly--suggesting, perhaps, that he is not in a cabin in Cedarn but rather in an asylum. The Cedarn story, on this reading, may be as fictional as the Zembla story. It is at this point that almost everything in the Commentary, much of which (quite apart from the Zembla story) is hard to accept anyway, begins to crumble..." ;
Jim Twiggs (2) "... a person living out a delusion might well be aware, at least part of the time (and regardless of how one might conceptualize the matter) of his "real" identity. The first passage, being a quick slip of the mask, is easy to overlook; the second, at the very end of the Commentary, is as close to being a key to the book as we are likely to find."
Jim Twiggs (3): "(Dowling) goes on to say that in Pale Fire, the Nabokov-like narrator is telling the story as a voice that, if it survives, will have exactly the same status as John Shade and Kinbote's. Here, it seems to me, he is either wrong or his point is trivial...In Pale Fire as most of us read it, Shade, Kinbote, and Jack Grey are on the same fictive level. Gradus, however is not on this level. Gradus is a character within Kinbote's story...If the N-LN's sole function is to be Nabokov's stand-in as creator of the novel, this is only slightly more interesting than Hitchcock strolling into one of his own movies...structurally it is trivial. All it does is push Kinbote, Shade, Grey, and Gradus up one notch on the fictive scale. All the old questions remain untouched.The second possibility is that the N-LN and Kinbote are one and the same. In this version, the N-LN is the ground-level personality whose insanity lies in thinking he is Charles the Beloved, the deposed king of Zembla. It is the N-LN, so conceived, who comes into view when the Kinbote mask slips." ..."In the second passage Kinbote goes in and out of his two identities. In describing a possible play, he gives away the plot of the novel (as he sees it) and shows a clear awareness that he is a deranged figment of his (as it turns out, Botkin's) own imagination. In the final possibility (and I believe the one that has come true)-- "I may huddle and groan in a madhouse"
Mary Bellino: "I assume a fairly straightforward, "traditional" reading of PF, positing an insane Kinbote who may or may not be V. Botkin, whose Zemblan life is a figment of his imagination but whose reportage of _events_ in New Wye is reliable (he did receive a note that said "You have h.......s real bad") even though his _interpretation_ of these events is wildly and transparently inaccurate (the note referred to halitosis, not hallucinations). This reading may also be extended to cover the Shade-as-author theory, if we assume that Shade went to extraordinary lengths to create verisimilitude in the account of the writing and publishing of "Kinbote's" commentary."
(this is the first instalment, part II will be submitted to our Eds soon. I wish the postings were briefer.)
..........................................................
* "Gradus is now much nearer to us in space and time...his human incompleteness ...we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad" and "My own opinion, which I would like the doctor to confirm, is that the French sandwich was engaged in an intestinal internecine war..." Compare to Shade: "But, Doctor, I was dead!/ He smiled. "Not quite: just half a shade." Or Kinbote's note to it: "Another fine example of our poet's special brand of combinational magic. The subtle pun here turns on two additional meanings of "shade"...The doctor is made to suggest that not only did Shade retain in his trance half of his identity but that he was also half a ghost. Knowing the particular medical man who treated my friend at the time, I venture to add that he is far too stodgy to have displayed any such wit."
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/