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Re: thoughts
Dear Sergei,
I hope you will not mind my putting your post and my responses into a
“Q & A” format. I’m uneasy, myself, with this method because it
puts the writer of the first post at a sort of passive disadvantage.
But, as I hope you’ll see, I don’t intend to use this technique to
score off you in any way.
Concerning the instructions to a publisher, and the discussion of the
quality
of the poem in PF at this list, that (the discussion) looks temporarily
dormant, I ask myself and like to ask you the following question: what
was the readiness of Shade's poem to publication from HIS point of
view?
Not ready at all. I cannot believe that a professional scholar and
working poet such as Shade would have considered a bulky envelope of
index cards to be a finished manuscript. No professional would consider
such a clumsy bundle as being ready for printing, nor for sending to a
publisher, or even a curious friend — especially not a crazy “loose
cannon” of a curious friend such as Prof. Botkin and his delusional
other self, the noble Charles Kinbote. The mss. would first be typed by
the secretary the book tells us Shade had. The resulting document would
have been marked up by its author at least once again, then typed
afresh, and only then given — maybe — to a close and trusted
friend, and to his (Shade’s) wife — for a careful reading before being
sent to a publisher. Even then, there would be at least one set of
galleys for review (just as we know that Shade reviewed galleys for his
book on Pope) before the poem would have moved any closer to
publication.
Reading the PF (the novel) we are invited to believe Kinbote that it was
almost finished, but in fact we know how Shade did work on his
texts only via Kinbote...
Although what we know about Shade SEEMS to come to us only
via Kinbote, if we accept the novel “pale” AS a novel, I’m obliged, at
the risk of being too literal, to say that I don’t believe a mature and
experienced writer such as Shade would work on his texts with
anyone (as Kinbote, anxious, eager, and naïve would so dearly love)
beyond sharing them with Sybil. In a scene in VN’s PF novel, Sybil
herself tells CK this much. Another scene, in which we find Kinbote
spying from a box hedge, shows Shade reading a portion of the poem to
his wife. But this does not look like a critiquing session so much as
Shade’s revelation to his wife of the subject the poem is based on — a
subject personal, private, and painful. Even here there is no evidence
that Shade would take Sybil’s advice as the final word on actual “writerly”
decisions.
Many authors are reluctant to show to anybody unfinished work. To [the]
others,
frequent discussions and reading to friends, family etc are part of the
process.
Confidence and responsibility, the characteristics of “real”
poets, most often rule out the sharing of uncompleted work after a
certain age. Any sharing, as I have said, would more likely occur
between just Shade and Sybil, whose relationship would permit sharing
as a natural part of the sharing that characterizes all aspects of
their life — if their life is as I believe VN would have us understand
the lives of his two ideal characters to be.
To show something to a neighbor and foreigner (and colleague) can
have multiple interpretations: e.g., the author respects this person,
is curious to know his opinion; or the contrary - is more indifferent,
and not worried about jealousy as it could be the case with another
poets or native colleagues.
In what PF the novel shows us of the relationship between CB and
JS, none of the above applies.
Kinbote is interested to say that after Shade finished "fair copy" he
would
send the text to the editors, but in reality Shade might rework his
poems many times even when fair copy was ready. For example,
it is easier to put yourself at a reader's place when you read a "fair
copy" of your own text. I know several professionals to whom
it is a part of the process, and "fair copies" are reworked again
many times before they are sent to the editors. Sometimes
very stupid fragments are noticed and edited out only in the very last
moment.
Based on my small knowledge of the writing/publishing process, I
thing this was indeed the case, as I describe above.
I think that the opinion that the poem in itself is "weak" and not
[a] good poetry (forcefully presented at this list) is justified by
several
really weak and even ridiculous places in the text. But it could be
much
farther form (sic) the final version planned by Shade, than Kinbote
wants us to
believe!
This possibility answers my own doubts about the poem’s quality. I
believe that, at best, the poem is not as “finished” a draft as Kinbote
thinks. In addition, Kinbote admits that he committed revisions of his
own, and I think that he committed even more revisions than he admits
to. Judging the poem in the novel with an injudicious amount of
generosity, what we have is a first draft botched by a madman with an
agenda.
[An] This (SS’s) conjecture makes the "post-mortem destiny" of a poem
(and poet) even more dramatic.
My view is that it shows the poem, its origins, and the form in
which it appears in the novel to be completely unreliable as an example
of the real work of a poet we must take on faith as great, yet at the
same time it suggests a great deal about the relationship between Shade
and his “shadow,” and tells us much, both in code and clearly, upon its
surface, about unwanted comments and unauthorized commentators: just a
few of the grave threats the world poses to the “Life and Art” of
geniuses.
Andrew Brown