CK: But can you see that
madness is a kind of
exile?
For Pushkin
(and, one supposes, for Nabokov) madness was much more
disastrous than exile:
Ne dai mne Bog soiti
s uma.
Net, legche posokh i
suma...
("The Lord forbid my
going mad.
No, [a
beggar's] crook and bag are not as heavy"; the first line's
translation is by Nabokov)
Incidentally, Pushkin wrote the short poem (which is one of his
greatest, according to Nabokov) beginning with these
lines after visiting mad Batyushkov.
Carolyn will
probably argue that mad Shade is trying to spurn off maddness by imagining
himself to be a royal exile. By the way, I like her idea that
Kinbote's crown jewels are Shade's index
cards.
Alexey
Sklyarenko