[EdNote: Sorry about the delay in posting this: when I saw it, I
thought it was an earlier message I had already forwarded]
-------- Original Message --------
Before I forget again, I meant to pick a nit in Stephen
Blackwell's remark, 'immediately after claiming that
"creative work" is the "clearest revelation of personality,"
Nabokov goes on to demonstrate how his own most recent
work has been anything but clear to its readers'. My
impression of the interview is that Dolbier may or may
not have given it to us in chronological order, and anyway
there are ellipses, so I don't think we know "immediately
after". Still the two comments were in the same interview,
so I can see that Nabokov may have intended them to contrast
ironically.
On the "real" story of Kinbote and Botkin, a possibility
not mentioned recently is one that Matt Roth has brought
up: maybe Kinbote and Botkin alternated, like Jekyll and
Hyde or like a werewolf. For all we know, maybe Botkin
still reappears once in a while as Kinbote is writing
the commentary.
Sam Gwynn says Zembla is part of Botkin's fantasy, and that's
the only way I can read the book--it doesn't fit on the map
anywhere, most of its details are obvious wish fulfillment on
Kinbote's part. But Vera Nabokov, transmitting her husband's
objections to printing a cast of Zemblan characters in the
first edition, wrote, "Nobody knows, nobody should know--even
Kinbote hardly knows--if Zembla really exists." And then "We
do not even know if Zembla is pure invention or a kind of
lyrical simile to Russia (Zembla: /Zemlya/)." VNAY, p. 463.
Kind of a mixed message, but this ambiguity makes me doubt my
conclusion that of course Zembla doesn't exist.
In the note to line 894, the style of some of Shade's
utterances makes me think we're supposed to take it as
Kinbote's invention. "Nay, sir," "the black garb of a pale
spinster", "Why, sir, I am afraid you have only punctured the
difficulty". If Kinbote invents his "dear friend"'s dialogue,
I imagine he can invent an encyclopedia. Of course, since
Kinbote is insane, presumably he's capable of anything, but
I don't see how that note has any value as evidence.
Even if it does, we have no idea when it happened. It
might have been the day before Shade was shot. Overall,
I don't see how we can't say when anyone but Shade knows
about "Kinbote". Shade presumably knows by May or June,
1959, if we believe Kinbote about their evening rambles,
but that was around the end of the academic year, and the
first datable evidence that anyone else knows is the
Summer School party at the Hurleys' (n. 629), as far as
I can tell. So there may be nothing to explain even if
firing professors had been easy.
Jerry Friedman
[Blackwell's reply to picked nit: good point about the "immediacy"
problem. For me, the larger point stands--that for Nabokov, while
creative art may indeed
be the clearest possible revelation of personality, it still leaves an
enormous number of mysteries ("trillions", as Krug says in BS).]