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Re: Pale Fire 'book of names' is Pnin
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Manfred Voss: Oxford University Press indeed published a book entitled "Russian surnames" by the Oxford professor Boris Unbegaun - alas not before 1972[...] Research into surnames is a legitimate pursuit, although there may be a whiff of pedantry and pedestrianism connected with it. I fail to understand what the fuss is about in this surname discussion. That VN ascribed a surname book to Kinbote is in all likelihood pure fictional fluff.
JM: Not really fictional fluff...
Returning to sentences extracted from D.Barton Johnson in "Worlds in Regression" who may serve as indicators of his original interpretation:
1."Pale Fire's Index ... has almost no relevance to the poem, but only to that portion of the Commentary which adduces the Zemblan theme [...] The major portion of the index is a "Who's Who" of Zemblan history...".
Johnson stresses how "anagrams play a vital role in our understanding of the labyrinth of Pale Fire and show once again that such word games are one of the ways in which Nabokov's fictional worlds relate to each other. The failure of the characters to recognize their literal kinship with each other is but a dimension of their failure to find the name of their creator who orchestrates the letter play that makes up their worlds".
Surnames, as I find them in VN, are a rich terrain for anagrams.
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JM: Not really fictional fluff...
Returning to sentences extracted from D.Barton Johnson in "Worlds in Regression" who may serve as indicators of his original interpretation:
1."Pale Fire's Index ... has almost no relevance to the poem, but only to that portion of the Commentary which adduces the Zemblan theme [...] The major portion of the index is a "Who's Who" of Zemblan history...".
Johnson stresses how "anagrams play a vital role in our understanding of the labyrinth of Pale Fire and show once again that such word games are one of the ways in which Nabokov's fictional worlds relate to each other. The failure of the characters to recognize their literal kinship with each other is but a dimension of their failure to find the name of their creator who orchestrates the letter play that makes up their worlds".
Surnames, as I find them in VN, are a rich terrain for anagrams.
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/