Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024267, Thu, 23 May 2013 22:24:06 -0300

Subject
More about doctors in Pale Fire: corrections
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As already notes, the Dr.Sutton on line 119 of John Shade's poem is not the one mentioned on line 986, but the Dr.Sutton who "lives higher up on the same wooded hill...an old clapboard house" and who sees to Hazel Shade, during the poltergeist and haunted barn episodes. Kinbote mentions him in his note to line 119 and in the notes to lines 230 and 347. The other Sutton has a daughter and is mentioned by Kinbote on lines 181 and 1000. Both are retired from their practice.

Kinbote obviously mistrusts doctors since Dr. Sutton (one of them) disturbs his theory about Aunt Maud's influence over Hazel Shade's insanity. Still following Kinbote we learn that Shade's theories inquire into a genetic disturbance that might have affected him and his daughter( "My poor friend could not help recalling the dramatic fits of his early boyhood and wondering if this was not a new genetic variant of the same theme, preserved through procreation" cf. CK note to line 230)
In his poem, John Shade writes about "old Dr.Sutton" and about "old doctor Colt" (this was the one who followed his first anxiety attacks while still a young boy).

There are at least two other doctors in the novel. One of them is mentioned in Shade's poem, and he remains anonymous in it.* He was in the front row during a talk delivered by the poet and offered professional help when Shade had a fainting fit and "died." The other doctor emerges only in Kinbote's notes. He is Dr. A or Dr. Ahlert, probably a heart-doctor who is consulted by both Shade and Kinbote (at least, according to CK). He is criticized by Kinbote for believing that John Shade had suffered from a heart ailment (in his heart attack in October 17,1958) and for his equally "incorrect" diagnosis of (perhaps!) Aunt Maud's illness.**

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* - Apparently Kinbote knew this other doctor, too: " "The doctor is made to suggest that not only did Shade retain in his trance half of his identity but that he was also half a ghost. Knowing the particular medical man who treated my friend at the time, I venture to add that he is far too stodgy to have displayed any such wit" (CK note to lines 727-728).
In another entry, writing about Gradus, Kinbote addresses still another imaginary doctor and he employs, for Gradus, a similar image as the one he used for Shade and following Shade's original lines "we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad." (CK line 949)
When dealing with the adventures of Gradus Kinbote refers to this vague figure of a "doctor" at least twice (just like Humbert addresses the "members of the jury")

**- ""The poet's recovery turned out indeed to be very speedy and would have to be called miraculous had there been anything organically wrong with his heart. There was not; a poet's nerves can play the queerest tricks but they also can quickly recapture the rhythm of health.[ ]. Incidentally: the reader should not take too seriously or too literally the passage about the alert doctor (an alert doctor, who as I well know once confused neuralgia with cerebral sclerosis)." (CK to line 691).

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