Dear Tomasz,

I agree with you--as I think everyone would--that there are many threads that connect VN's novels. I'm not sure that is enough to surmise that Kinbote's "remarkable book on surnames" is, in fact, Pnin. I rather suspect that Kinbote's book is another marker placed there by Nabokov to show us that this dialogue never actually took place. In the scene, Shade and Kinbote together assert that there is an English translation ("Oxford, 1956") of the book; but a book on surnames would be almost impossible to translate. It would be even more difficult than Pale Fire! Why? Because many of the differences and connections between names and their origins would disappear when translated into a different language. Imagine, for instance, if a book on surnames were translated from English into German. What would we do with a last name like Steinmann? The German translation would say that Steinmann comes from the German and means "steinmann." I think Jansy once pointed out something similar in Pale Fire, where the Portuguese translation obliterated the difference between two words in the original English. In any case, as JF recently noted, the whole of the dialogue in C.894 is highly suspect.

If you have not read Barabtarlo's exhaustive annotations to Pnin, you might give it a look. He does a great job unpacking many of the name associations there.

Best,

Matt Roth

 

 

 

 

Sorry for my bad english. I must say that I am not sure what 'book of surnemes' really is.

Can someone explain that?  Why Kinbote would write such book of surnames?

 

I want to say couple of things. 

 

Pale Fire is book that contains great concrete mystery. I think

that everyone admit  that Pale Fire holds mystery. For example nobody knows

what fragment with enumeration of many languages by kinbote mean

and why it is written etc. Nobody really nows really about nothing about this book.

I think that this book should be read as a book of metaphors 

and I think that every character (for example Oswin Bretvit, Sylvia, Lavender, Iris Acht)

also every dialogue and so on has its own strong methaphorical meaning.

For example I was trying to read in some time Hazel, Sybil and John dialogue

in old barn as a methaphor as world creation (or begining of consciousnes,

or maybe end of our material world) John as a Time, Sybil as a Space, and Hazel

maybe as a 'spectre' - all in absolute darkness at the begining.

Pale Fire contains mystery and I also think that this mystery if great,

is complex and book should be raead not strict but methaphorical.

Gradus is methaphor of something (death? gradation of growing consciousnes?)

Oswin is metaphor of something (method? I do not know) Emerald

is metaphor of somthing or someone and so on.

I thing that I 'feel' quite a lot about Pale Fire but understand only quite a bit.

Pale Fire is a book that creates for me a very strong and glowing

dreamy vision of its contents.

 

As to Pnin I think that it can be also such a charade but I do not 'feel'

this book. Pnin (as a character) is mentioned in Pale Fire, those books

are evidently interconnected. Question is if there can be discovered

more about this connection. I think that this  'book of surnames' Oxford, 1956 

may be some hint. This is how I see that subjects. I want to share

such concept among the others. It can said something in may opinion both

about "Pale Fire" and "Pnin"

 

 

Tomasz Kaminski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.