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Re: THOUGHT on Shade as poet
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John Morris: A final thought: Ever since I first read "Pale Fire" the novel... I've been fascinated to realize that there is immense disagreement about the merits of "Pale Fire" the poem...
JM: Nabokov has described John Shade as " the greatest fictional poet," etc. Perhaps John Shade was a "mask," because at first Nabokov wasn't sure about the merits of "Pale Fire" as an independent poem.
In Steve Blackwell´s Introduction ( to "The Quill and the Scalpel") he wrote:" "Rather than represent the professional voice of a scientist directly, by means of his lepidopterist character, Nabokov instead has the scientist's son Fyodor, a poet and budding novelist, re-create a vision of the Russian scientific texts indirectly, by means of fragments that have been translated into English and retranslated back into Russian, with the assistance of memory.Why all these layers of complexity?... The choice had two key benefits: it saved Nabokov from the need to set his scientific fancies in a form that might someday be mistaken as one of his actual scientific texts... Still more significantly, it suggests ...a scientific approach to nature that has been absorbed and intervowen with the very fabric of the artistic text itself, by means of the artist-son's consciousness and memory." Perhaps in the same way that, in the "Gift," Nabokov used a fictional character to distinguish his writings as a scientist from his work as a novelist, he could have used Shade to mediate, or rather, isolate his elaborate poetic experiment, in Pale Fire, from his other works as poet. This wouldn't mean that didn't consider his poem as not being up to his standards or unable to stand by itself bu,t perhaps, that it was a particularly ambitious project of his.
I cannot quote his exact words now but Nabokov often dismissed any "psychological intent" lurking behind his construction of a "character." He equally emphasized their role as his "galley slaves" and to serve his structural preferences.
Why cannot we consider that Hazel was mainly an element in his intended "pattern," one that led the reader, from an originally neurotic (psychotic?) young woman, who drowned herself, to the conjuring up of a kind of mystical "sea-change"? The pathos, the slime and the beauty are all there, rising from VN's words and music and images.
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JM: Nabokov has described John Shade as " the greatest fictional poet," etc. Perhaps John Shade was a "mask," because at first Nabokov wasn't sure about the merits of "Pale Fire" as an independent poem.
In Steve Blackwell´s Introduction ( to "The Quill and the Scalpel") he wrote:" "Rather than represent the professional voice of a scientist directly, by means of his lepidopterist character, Nabokov instead has the scientist's son Fyodor, a poet and budding novelist, re-create a vision of the Russian scientific texts indirectly, by means of fragments that have been translated into English and retranslated back into Russian, with the assistance of memory.Why all these layers of complexity?... The choice had two key benefits: it saved Nabokov from the need to set his scientific fancies in a form that might someday be mistaken as one of his actual scientific texts... Still more significantly, it suggests ...a scientific approach to nature that has been absorbed and intervowen with the very fabric of the artistic text itself, by means of the artist-son's consciousness and memory." Perhaps in the same way that, in the "Gift," Nabokov used a fictional character to distinguish his writings as a scientist from his work as a novelist, he could have used Shade to mediate, or rather, isolate his elaborate poetic experiment, in Pale Fire, from his other works as poet. This wouldn't mean that didn't consider his poem as not being up to his standards or unable to stand by itself bu,t perhaps, that it was a particularly ambitious project of his.
I cannot quote his exact words now but Nabokov often dismissed any "psychological intent" lurking behind his construction of a "character." He equally emphasized their role as his "galley slaves" and to serve his structural preferences.
Why cannot we consider that Hazel was mainly an element in his intended "pattern," one that led the reader, from an originally neurotic (psychotic?) young woman, who drowned herself, to the conjuring up of a kind of mystical "sea-change"? The pathos, the slime and the beauty are all there, rising from VN's words and music and images.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/