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Pale Fire paper
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Jerry Friedman: "Forward" for "foreword" is a common spelling error[...] I doubt that anything about Kinbote's Foreword particularly
impels this error.
JM: I was suggesting a connection bt. Kinbote and his invention, Gradus. A written text may have a "suggestive" effect that strikes readers in a particular manner. Like Jensen's "Gradiva", Gradus is stealthily moving forward with an "aggr-essive" intent. Kinbote wants Gradus to coincide with Shade's penning of his poem. Such a "foreword thrust" is a dominant feature in Pale Fire. Gradus' ghostly reality is manifest in CK's last lines (before the Index - and when was it inserted?): "But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out — somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door — a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus."
You are earnestly hoping that "some people got the o with the Hungarian 'long umlaut'[ Cf. SKB: note that o: stands here for ‘o’ with the Hungarian umlaut] but I don't get your "long" point. I hope I understood your former reference to a "symbolic reading", though, brought up right after you spoke of "overlapping" images/sentences! I greatly enjoyed your observations.
Do you think that Nabokov, instead of always making them explicit, favored "impending metaphors"? Like a kind of :
"when I confront you with overlapping visions, it is your task to find your own metaphors to render them in words"?
SK-Bootle: I always took ‘The Big Maybe’ to refer to ‘Life after Death’ rather than Death itself [...] ... there’s no IF in Death. But the great ‘Hereinafter’ mystery surely persists as the dominant theme in human ruminations [...] Even for devout Zemblan Catholics like Kinbote, or Danish/Elizabethan Christians like Hamlet [ Peut-être ou ne pas peut-être, c’est pas la question,SK-B], the Afterlife can be truly terrifying. I also love Fitzgerald’s version of Omar Khayyam’s [...] Thou wilt not with Predestination round/ Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?
JM: Kinbote ( in Humbert's case this is clearly stated by him) expressed their hellish fears directly and could not believe in a "felix culpa" nor hope for "salvation", although they kept their faith in an extraneous "punishment". They seem predestined to live in the worst of the impossible worlds.
......................
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impels this error.
JM: I was suggesting a connection bt. Kinbote and his invention, Gradus. A written text may have a "suggestive" effect that strikes readers in a particular manner. Like Jensen's "Gradiva", Gradus is stealthily moving forward with an "aggr-essive" intent. Kinbote wants Gradus to coincide with Shade's penning of his poem. Such a "foreword thrust" is a dominant feature in Pale Fire. Gradus' ghostly reality is manifest in CK's last lines (before the Index - and when was it inserted?): "But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out — somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door — a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus."
You are earnestly hoping that "some people got the o with the Hungarian 'long umlaut'[ Cf. SKB: note that o: stands here for ‘o’ with the Hungarian umlaut] but I don't get your "long" point. I hope I understood your former reference to a "symbolic reading", though, brought up right after you spoke of "overlapping" images/sentences! I greatly enjoyed your observations.
Do you think that Nabokov, instead of always making them explicit, favored "impending metaphors"? Like a kind of :
"when I confront you with overlapping visions, it is your task to find your own metaphors to render them in words"?
SK-Bootle: I always took ‘The Big Maybe’ to refer to ‘Life after Death’ rather than Death itself [...] ... there’s no IF in Death. But the great ‘Hereinafter’ mystery surely persists as the dominant theme in human ruminations [...] Even for devout Zemblan Catholics like Kinbote, or Danish/Elizabethan Christians like Hamlet [ Peut-être ou ne pas peut-être, c’est pas la question,SK-B], the Afterlife can be truly terrifying. I also love Fitzgerald’s version of Omar Khayyam’s [...] Thou wilt not with Predestination round/ Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?
JM: Kinbote ( in Humbert's case this is clearly stated by him) expressed their hellish fears directly and could not believe in a "felix culpa" nor hope for "salvation", although they kept their faith in an extraneous "punishment". They seem predestined to live in the worst of the impossible worlds.
......................
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/