I intended no disrespect to Jansy in my post about Barthes. If  my “surely not” came across that way, then of course I apologize. 


To look at the matter from a different angle, Barthes’ famous essay, with its even more famous title, didn’t appear in either French or English till several years after Pale Fire was published. It could not, therefore, have been an object of parody for VN. 


Stripped of the drama of the word “death” and of his broader philosophical and political aims, Barthes’ thesis has much in common with a key idea of American New Criticism. As Wimsatt and Beardsley put it in their paper on the intentional fallacy, published in 1946, a poem “is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs to the public.” In other words, for all he can do about its fate, the author of a poem (or novel) might as well be dead the minute it falls into the hands of readers. 


Although I appreciate Simon Rowberry’s point, not even as vigilant and imposing a presence as VN could control the vast flow of conflicting readings that every work of any value is bound to provoke. The reception and history of Lolita--and of the very name “Lolita” and the word “nymphet”--provide obvious examples. For that matter, VN himself seemed to be well aware of what Barthes, and before him Wimsatt and Beardsley, had in mind. In a letter to Carl Proffer, mentioned by A. Bouazza and Stephen Blackwell back in August, VN wrote as follows:


"Page 72 A considerable part of what Mr. Nabokov thinks has been thought up by his critics and commentators, including Mr. Proffer, for whose thinking he is not responsible. Many of the delightful combinations and clues, though quite acceptable, never entered my head or are the result of an author's intuition and inspiration, not calculation and craft. Otherwise why bother at all--in your case as well as mine." Selected Letters 1940-1977, p. 391, letter dated September 26, 1966.


I agree with Stephen that this passage, written in response to Proffer’s book Keys to Lolita, is “very important and under-quoted.” 


The English translation of Barthes’ essay and also Wimsatt and Beardsley’s “The Intentional Fallacy” are readily available online.


Finally, Jansy may share my amusement that in 1992 Gilbert Adair published a novella called The Death of the Author, based apparently (I haven’t read it) on the rise and fall of the arch-deconstructionist Paul de Man. Although VN likely didn’t know any deconstructionists, he was bound to have met, at each of his American schools, a few new critics. Or perhaps in creating the character of Kinbote, he was pulling the legs of such old-critic friends as Wilson and Levin. And perhaps Pale Fire is not only a seeming parody of what later came to be called postmodernism but is itself, as some have said, an early entry in that movement. It hardly seems to matter. Wild interpretations are neither recent inventions nor the special failures of any particular school of thought. They have been around as long as there have been writers and readers, speakers and listeners--which is to say, since the dawn of communication. 


Jim Twiggs




From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wed, November 17, 2010 10:04:31 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Dead and living authors

Simon Rowbery: "Is it not Nabokov himself who enacts Barthes' 'death of the author' in Pale Fire? I believe it is the novel whose criticism has moved beyond the intentions of Nabokov the most within his canon because of the death of his authority in the novel, predominantly by writing a novel of such complexity with multiple characters in various fictional worlds. In Pale Fire, however, it can only be said that the death of the author leads to the birth of the re-reader. Something that Nabokov would appreciate. Perhaps this is where the ideologies converge with their focus on re-reading a text."
 
JM: Good point on "the death of the author leads to the birth of the re-reader" and the convergence of several ideologies taking place - independently of Nabokov's original intention.
 
Just as it happened when I read James Twiggs assertion that the death of Shade is "not illustrative of any such general idea as Barthes' "death of the author," I must puzzle over the meaning of "enact the 'death of the author'. "  I'm probably wrong in my assumption...  For me, the "death of the author" isn't an enacted posture, a strategy which may be technically applied over a text, but it'd come closer to a Weltanschauung or an "ideology," as you described it further on, admitting its "inevitability" in a complex novel with various fictional worlds, and inspite of Nabokov's deliberate control over his text.  
This is why I considered it possible that Nabokov used the expression in a satirical vein for he'd not accept his "disappearance" from his novel: let his characters suffer death, not their creator. For him a bigger Gradus is necessary...  
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Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
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All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.