It is a biological, psychological and social fact that looks matter. Even infants under experimental conditions prefer to look longer at images of faces independently rated attractive than at those rated as ugly. Children associate with good-looking peers rather than with the less attractive, other things being equal, as has also been confirmed experimentally. We know this intuitively, and that’s why Hazel gets left out at parties and gets cast in an undesirable role. Looks matter even more in adolescence and youth, and they matter more for women, since men choose partners more on the basis of looks than women choose men on this basis (again confirmed experimentally). As Nabokov said once, it is cant to say that looks don’t matter.

 
            Romantic love is trite, and death is trite, in Michael Glynn’s terms. Both indeed are much triter than the unhappiness of the physically highly unattractive. Yet many great works of art focus on romantic love (Shakespearean comedies, Austen novels) or death (Shakespearean and any other tragedies). The very “triteness” or commonness of the subject matter in fact indicates how much it matters to us, and how deeply we are interested. The pains of looking unattractive are a much less commonplace subject of art, but at the same time, because we know looks count, a subject with emotional resonance, amplified in the case of Shade’s poem by the fact of Hazel’s death and her parent’s grief (more “trite” subject matter).
 
            No one would dispute a rough similarity in subject matter in the three examples Michael Glynn offers. But if he cannot see the difference in poetic quality between his three examples, I fail to see how he can evaluate “Pale Fire” as a poem. Teen angst in examples 1 and 3, even in terms of subject matter, is actually much more obvious than the theme of the lifelong humiliation Hazel has had to suffer and Shade has had to witness. And where in 1 and 3 is there anything like the bitter irony of “But let’s be fair” or the anguish of “A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom”?
 
Brian Boyd

On 10/12/2005, at 8:45 AM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:



----- Forwarded message from michael.glynn@btinternet.com -----
    Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 18:39:30 -0000
    From: michael glynn <michael.glynn@btinternet.com>
Reply-To: michael glynn <michael.glynn@btinternet.com>
 Subject: Re:      Pale Fire
      To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Dear Sir - re Shade's poem and its alleged greatness.  Could i offer a few
thoughts extracted from Vladimir Nabokov and the Problem of Seeing?  Many
Thanks, Michael Glynn



 When Kinbote finally  learns that Shade's poem is wholly oblivious to his
Zemblan idyll, Kinbote's assessment of the great man's work  is trenchant and
pointedly Nabokovian.  To Kinbote, Shade's poem is simply  "an
autobiographical, eminently Appalachian, rather old-fashioned narrative in a
neo-Popian prosodic style."  I would suggest that Kinbote's verdict is intended
to command the assent of the reader, and that Nabokov's treatment of Shade and
his poem is in fact ironic.  This is a notion  that would discomfit some
critics:   Herbert Grabes holds the poem to be "an extremely elaborate work of
art, typical of the later phases of some literary epoch,"  and Andrew Field
sees it as an important work, one worthy of critical study in isolation from
the rest of the text. Brian Boyd, a staunch champion of Shade as presiding
genius in the novel, hails the poem somewhat hyperbolically as a "masterpiece"
and "a deliberate challenge to both Pound's Cantos and Eliot's Four Quartets."
G.M. Hyde argues that Shade's poem reveals a serious and deep kinship with the
work of Frost in that it manifests the latter's characteristic stoicism in the
face of "terrible and incomprehensible things."    Others have, however,
expressed reservations about Shade's poetic offering.  Douglas Fowler finds the
poem's heroic couplet form to be limiting whilst Alvin B. Kernan argues that the
poem should be read as "an extended and amusing spoof." In my view, the
challenge Nabokov set himself in writing "Shade's" poem was to produce a highly
competent but highly conventional piece of work,  one which would ultimately be
deemed an artistic failure.  Nabokov appears deliberately to over-egg the
pudding, having Shade present us with a daughter who is not only plump and
plain but also unpopular, squinty-eyed, clumsy, swollen-footed, psoriatic and,
perhaps not surprisingly in view of her multiple afflictions, deeply mentally
troubled.  Furthermore, it appears to have gone generally unremarked that this
central conceit of the plain teenager rejected by her peers is a suspiciously
mawkish one, the stuff of adolescent fiction or any number of late twentieth
century pop songs.  A brief comparative exercise will, I believe, throw into
relief Nabokov's slyly ironic intent.  Consider the following three extracts:



1) It must have broke your poor little heart

When the boys used to say to you looked better in the dark

......................................................................

The teacher would ask a question

And you would always raise your hand
But somehow you never got your turn

My eyes would fill with water, inside I'd burn, oh yes I did



2) At Christmas parties, games were rough, no doubt,

And one shy little guest might be left out;

But let's be fair: while children of her age

Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,

My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,

And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.



3) I learned the truth at seventeen

That love was meant for beauty queens

And high school girls with clear skinned smiles

Who married young and then retired.

The valentines I never knew

The Friday night charades of youth

Were spent on one more beautiful

At seventeen I learned the truth



And those of us with ravaged faces

Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home

Inventing lovers on the phone

Who called to say - Come dance with me



As will be readily appreciated, the first and third extracts,  song lyrics from
The Chi-Lites' Homely Girl and Janis Ian's At Seventeen respectively, are
characterised by a degree of triteness.  However, the second extract, from
Shade's poem, is almost identical in terms of subject matter and tone.  Nabokov
was too much the literary sophisticate unconsciously to produce such lachrymose
and  hackneyed work.  If, as I maintain, Shade's poem is in part mawkish and
conventional, it is because Nabokov intends it to be so.  Nabokov is suggesting
that Shade's attempt artistically to confront the loss of his daughter fails
where Kinbote's distorted and distorting exploration of loss succeeds.  As I
have already suggested, Shade was instinctively Symbolist, concerned ultimately
with there rather than here.  However, when he addresses the tragic situation of
his daughter he attempts to do  so in a direct, immediate and sincere way,
thereby hoping to give the reader an unmediated slice of  reality.   I believe
that Nabokov wishes us to see this as a doomed attempt.  Not for nothing is
Shade so called. The poet's effort is eclipsed by the madman's commentary.
When Shade attempts  to evoke his daughter's tragic situation  in conventional,
heartfelt verse, he is betrayed into triteness.  It is Kinbote's estranging
method that can capture the essence of a tragic reality.  In order to evoke the
twin pains of exile and unhappy marriage, Kinbote, via oblique means,
triumphantly transcends what Shklovsky termed "the sphere of automatised
perception."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----- End forwarded message -----
Dear Sir - re Shade's poem and its alleged greatness.  Could i offer a few thoughts extracted from Vladimir Nabokov and the Problem of Seeing?  Many Thanks, Michael Glynn

 

 When Kinbote finally  learns that Shade’s poem is wholly oblivious to his Zemblan idyll, Kinbote’s assessment of the great man’s work  is trenchant and pointedly Nabokovian.  To Kinbote, Shade’s poem is simply  “an autobiographical, eminently Appalachian, rather old-fashioned narrative in a neo-Popian prosodic style.”  I would suggest that Kinbote’s verdict is intended to command the assent of the reader, and that Nabokov’s treatment of Shade and his poem is in fact ironic.  This is a notion  that would discomfit some critics:   Herbert Grabes holds the poem to be “an extremely elaborate work of art, typical of the later phases of some literary epoch,”  and Andrew Field sees it as an important work, one worthy of critical study in isolation from the rest of the text. Brian Boyd, a staunch champion of Shade as presiding genius in the novel, hails the poem somewhat hyperbolically as a “masterpiece” and “a deliberate challenge to both Pound’s Cantos and Eliot’s Four Quartets.” G.M. Hyde argues that Shade’s poem reveals a serious and deep kinship with the work of Frost in that it manifests the latter’s characteristic stoicism in the face of “terrible and incomprehensible things.”    Others have, however, expressed reservations about Shade’s poetic offering.  Douglas Fowler finds the poem’s heroic couplet form to be limiting whilst Alvin B. Kernan argues that the poem should be read as “an extended and amusing spoof.” In my view, the challenge Nabokov set himself in writing “Shade’s” poem was to produce a highly competent but highly conventional piece of work,  one which would ultimately be deemed an artistic failure.  Nabokov appears deliberately to over-egg the pudding, having Shade present us with a daughter who is not only plump and plain but also unpopular, squinty-eyed, clumsy, swollen-footed, psoriatic and, perhaps not surprisingly in view of her multiple afflictions, deeply mentally troubled.  Furthermore, it appears to have gone generally unremarked that this central conceit of the plain teenager rejected by her peers is a suspiciously mawkish one, the stuff of adolescent fiction or any number of late twentieth century pop songs.  A brief comparative exercise will, I believe, throw into relief Nabokov’s slyly ironic intent.  Consider the following three extracts:
 
1) It must have broke your poor little heart
When the boys used to say to you looked better in the dark
…………………………………………………………….
The teacher would ask a question

And you would always raise your hand

But somehow you never got your turn
My eyes would fill with water, inside I’d burn, oh yes I did
 
2) At Christmas parties, games were rough, no doubt,
And one shy little guest might be left out;
But let’s be fair: while children of her age
Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage
That she’d helped paint for the school pantomime,
My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,
A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,
And like a fool I sobbed in the men’s room.
 
3) I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired.
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth
 
And those of us with ravaged faces

Lacking in the social graces

Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say – Come dance with me    

       

As will be readily appreciated, the first and third extracts,  song lyrics from The Chi-Lites’ Homely Girl and Janis Ian’s At Seventeen respectively, are characterised by a degree of triteness.  However, the second extract, from Shade’s poem, is almost identical in terms of subject matter and tone.  Nabokov was too much the literary sophisticate unconsciously to produce such lachrymose and  hackneyed work.  If, as I maintain, Shade’s poem is in part mawkish and conventional, it is because Nabokov intends it to be so.  Nabokov is suggesting that Shade’s attempt artistically to confront the loss of his daughter fails where Kinbote’s distorted and distorting exploration of loss succeeds.  As I have already suggested, Shade was instinctively Symbolist, concerned ultimately with there rather than here.  However, when he addresses the tragic situation of his daughter he attempts to do  so in a direct, immediate and sincere way, thereby hoping to give the reader an unmediated slice of  reality.   I believe that Nabokov wishes us to see this as a doomed attempt.  Not for nothing is Shade so called. The poet’s effort is eclipsed by the madman’s commentary.  When Shade attempts  to evoke his daughter’s tragic situation  in conventional, heartfelt verse, he is betrayed into triteness.  It is Kinbote’s estranging method that can capture the essence of a tragic reality.  In order to evoke the twin pains of exile and unhappy marriage, Kinbote, via oblique means, triumphantly transcends what Shklovsky termed “the sphere of automatised perception.”