NABOKV-L discussion

Puritans in Pale Fire

by Gerard de Vries

The Mad Hatter’s Hats

Unpacking the Nested Hat Boxes

                  inside

Vladimir Nabokov’s Semi-Autobiographies

                  Part I

In the light of discussions (and the surge in activity) presented by both Gerard de Vries’ essay and Mary Ross’s comments, I wish to offer here, my two Indian cents.

by Gerard de Vries

Has Nabokov commented explicitly on Alexander Herzen elsewhere apart from Speak, Memory? The nod to Herzen's From the Other Shore has been noted long ago as is this passage (as a caption to their Petersburg address):

"Aleksandr Ivanovich Hertzen (1812–1870) was a famous liberal (whom this commemoration by a police state would hardly have gratified) as well as the talented author of Bïloe i Dumï (translatable as “Bygones and Meditations”), one of my father’s favorite books."
Searching in the forum this thread comes up:

An Arrant Thief,

A poem of couplets in 123 lines, divided into Four Cantos.

[See Attached, 5 pages]

A collegial, companion piece that is congenial to the creative and pays homage to Vladimir Nabokov’s poem, Pale Fire.

There are a few bits of Pale Fire which I haven’t seen mentioned in the forums, and I’m never sure whether this is because they’re so obvious as to not need comment, or because they’ve not been broadly understood (or maybe we completely disagree). At the risk of stating the obvious, here are a few brief notes.

The confounding of space and time is a recurring theme in Nabokov’s work, starting at least as early as Mary, where consecutive rooms are identified with consecutive dates:

The Dream of Mademoiselle as Jezebel

Getting to the Root of the Scene in Drugie berega / Other Shores

An Examination of Vladimir Nabokov's Russian semi-autobiography regarding his governess, Mademoiselle, in Chapter 5. Correlating the Dream of Mlle as Jezebel, the Bible, Racine's "Athalie" and the Potemkin Stairs into Nabokov's possible deep psychological cause to his deep distaste to the writing of Jean Racine.

Attached: 15 pages = Title Page + 12 Pages of Text + 1 page of Pics (3) + Endnotes Page (15)

Another cursory thing came up while doing other things. There are more than enough allusions in the rich tapestry of Ada for me to add one more, but something in the following passage just clicks instantly. Brian Boyd annotates it as follows:

Although I have been intrigued by this entry ever since Brian Boyd's mention of it under Nabokov's Reading (in the forthcoming Think, Write, Speak) only now do I look up Nabokov's Eugene Onegin and see that his epistolary novel Obermann has been quoted approvingly several times in the course of the commentary. One of them goes like this: