Ron Rosenbaum: "With Jansy, I too wonder about Chabon on PF. Doesn't he misread it entirely? If anyone "tucked" anything into John Shade's poem it was Kinbote who crammed the entire Zemblan fantasy into Shade's poem. Obviously VN created Kinbote, but also obviously did not share his mad misprision. I would, however, suggest (I do't think I'm alone) that Zembla does correspond in some ways with the lost homeland of VN. There is the anti-royalist coup in a "northern land" that forced the family of VN and (in his fantasy) Kinbote/Botkin to flee assassins."

Jansy Mello: You stated the matter with precision when you noted that, although VN created Kinbote, it was this character the one who "tucked" the entire Zemblan fantasy into Shade's poem, by means of his commentary. Although I never visited Russia, nor VN's childhood world, I also agree with you that Zembla does correspond in some ways to VN's lost homeland (the cracked ice-sheets on a sidewalk, the racemosa bloom, the expected contrast between the aristocratic "monde" and the people.

Your formulation allowed me to wonder, for the first time, why did Nabokov choose the perspective of a gay, egocentric and delirious King to write about his private pains of exile and estrangement.