EDNote--Sorry about the delay on this one! ~SB
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Two topics for exploration in Pale Fire. I promise that no question
presented in this posting is a merely rhetorical one to which I pretend
to
already have an answer (but never fear, I'll succumb to those later).
1)
When Kinbote presents the section of Pale Fire that tracks the Shade's
television viewing with Hazel's last night, he lets us know in his
commentary that he, Kinbote, has put the Hazel material in italics.
I think the italics do some harm to the poem AS a poem. But I wonder if
anyone has found any meaning-clues here. Is there any way that Kinbote
got certain passages "wrong" - that is, that any part of what he
italicized is not from the Hazel side? Does the section read
differently
without the italics? It would be a cunning way for Nabokov to hide a
clue.
2)
That translation into Zemblan of Timon of Athens that is the only book
Kinbote has with him in the cabin while he writes his commentary - what
IS
it?
This might be no mystery at all if you take a certain view of the
fictional situation, but I sense a physical reality to this volume
thanks
to its limitations - if it is purely imaginary, why doesn't Kinbote
imagine a whole library of Zemblan literature there with him? Also, the
way it pops up incongruously in one of the Zemblan adventures,
suggesting
a real object being incorporated into a dream, like the sound of an
alarm
clock transmuted into the cry of a siren.
Boyd makes a lot of Kinbote's incompetence as a scholar causing his
inability to find the phrase "pale fire" in Timon, but there's no
incompetence, really, if the version Kinbote has with him is a
translation - of any kind, actually.
So did Kinbote complete one and only one book in Zemblan, a translation
of
Timon that he carries with him, and attributes to Conmal (whom he
defends,
weirdly, personally)?
I would be greatly interested in and thankful for your responses.