Vladimir Nabokov

A Possible Important Source for Pale Fire

By MARYROSS, 19 July, 2018

Zachary Ross (my son) has just come across a very interesting article that I believe suggests an important source for Pale Fire:

 

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ass-foretold

 

 

It’s an excerpt from a book on Mesmerism (“The Ass Foretold” by Emily Ogden), which in turn has an excerpt from a satiric book in the form of an iambic Swiftian-Popeian-Johnsonian poem w/fake commentary by a now little-known poet of the mid 19th century, Laughton Osborn (he only rates a stub on Wikipedia). Edgar Allan Poe called “Vision of Rubeta, An Epic Story of the Island of Manhattan” the best American satire ever written.

 

Satirizing a despised New York editor, it is a mock-myth about an island kingdom of a fatuous fool with equally preposterous commentary – apparently quite risqué.

 

I have not read either this book or the book on Mesmerism, but it seems to me to suggest an important source for PF. It seems all of the allusions in PF to poets and writers have some connection with the occult. I would assume it very likely that VN, who adored Poe, would have read this book.

 

The whole book is available online:

 

https://archive.org/details/visionofrubetaep00osbo