Subject
Re: Where is Shade? Where is Gradus?
From
Date
Body
George, your sentence puzzles me: "Because these doubts are ours, they are based on our generic suppositions - not on specific facts (read, sentences) of fictional world of PF." Aren't we all restricted to our suppositions ( read, interpretations) about any fictional creation since these are the only "facts" which the workings of language offer?
Thank you for writing about our shared belief that Gradus is "important if not critical to fuller and better reading of PF." ( Of PF, if not of art in general, as you seemed to suggest later on).
It is also my interpretation that Gradus is an invention of Kinbote's. You made a very good point by stressing that CK "invents him to connect Shade's art (the poem) with Zembla fantasy. He had to as Shade did no cooperate, so to speak, with Zembla - in his poem."
You concluded: [Speaking of reversal (cure) of split personality disorder , I admit that Botkin-Kinbote became united with Gradus at the moment he pulls the trigger on himself at novel's fictional end.].
Do you mean "split personality disorder" as in some psychotic breakdown? This is quite an interesting idea when you observe that this kind of cure arrives through the experience of "death" ( not necessarily a physical death).
You added a sentence that described the impending "crash of his imagined world". I wonder why (at our present discussion) nobody brought up the various "crashes" that take place in Pale Fire: the waxwing against the window, King Alfin against a building, Oleg's accident with a toboggan and several others...
Perhaps even Hazel's suicide may be heard crashing through the crackling ice after she stood at the "azure" entrance of the bar where she'd been jilted!
There is also a connected theme, dealing with "dropping", "throwing oneself out of a window", "parachuting"...
Trying to recollect other "crashes" I thought of CK sighting of JS at the begining of his story. JS had slipped on the ice and fell, and his heavy crash gave start to the engine of his car... Like Nabokov and his wife, it was Sybil who drove JS to classes and visits (JS didn't own a car, or did he?), but, unlike VN, Shade did his own type-writing? He also seemed to be a keen observer of butterflies ( or, at least, of the smaller details in the coloring of a Red Admiral's wings)
Carolyn Kunin sent us a delightful list of questions, such as the one about "Heathcliff's toothbrush" (by John Sutherland). One such item occurred to me now: why did Shade often name a tree "shag-bark". Kinbote informed us it is a "Juniper" ( a great favourite among birds and catterpillars and cicadas?) The cadence is nice but Juniper also sounds lovely, carrying a suggestion of June and Juno and...Oh, well.
Speaking of sounds there is disagreeable reference of Gradus deriving erotic pleasure while squeezing a gross swelling. The selected term was "comedo". There is a medical term: "comedocarcinoma", but is comedo a common word in English usage? Quite often, when writing about Swift, Kinbote offers us a whiff of not only this writer's actual novels or satires, but of his scatological tastes...
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
Thank you for writing about our shared belief that Gradus is "important if not critical to fuller and better reading of PF." ( Of PF, if not of art in general, as you seemed to suggest later on).
It is also my interpretation that Gradus is an invention of Kinbote's. You made a very good point by stressing that CK "invents him to connect Shade's art (the poem) with Zembla fantasy. He had to as Shade did no cooperate, so to speak, with Zembla - in his poem."
You concluded: [Speaking of reversal (cure) of split personality disorder , I admit that Botkin-Kinbote became united with Gradus at the moment he pulls the trigger on himself at novel's fictional end.].
Do you mean "split personality disorder" as in some psychotic breakdown? This is quite an interesting idea when you observe that this kind of cure arrives through the experience of "death" ( not necessarily a physical death).
You added a sentence that described the impending "crash of his imagined world". I wonder why (at our present discussion) nobody brought up the various "crashes" that take place in Pale Fire: the waxwing against the window, King Alfin against a building, Oleg's accident with a toboggan and several others...
Perhaps even Hazel's suicide may be heard crashing through the crackling ice after she stood at the "azure" entrance of the bar where she'd been jilted!
There is also a connected theme, dealing with "dropping", "throwing oneself out of a window", "parachuting"...
Trying to recollect other "crashes" I thought of CK sighting of JS at the begining of his story. JS had slipped on the ice and fell, and his heavy crash gave start to the engine of his car... Like Nabokov and his wife, it was Sybil who drove JS to classes and visits (JS didn't own a car, or did he?), but, unlike VN, Shade did his own type-writing? He also seemed to be a keen observer of butterflies ( or, at least, of the smaller details in the coloring of a Red Admiral's wings)
Carolyn Kunin sent us a delightful list of questions, such as the one about "Heathcliff's toothbrush" (by John Sutherland). One such item occurred to me now: why did Shade often name a tree "shag-bark". Kinbote informed us it is a "Juniper" ( a great favourite among birds and catterpillars and cicadas?) The cadence is nice but Juniper also sounds lovely, carrying a suggestion of June and Juno and...Oh, well.
Speaking of sounds there is disagreeable reference of Gradus deriving erotic pleasure while squeezing a gross swelling. The selected term was "comedo". There is a medical term: "comedocarcinoma", but is comedo a common word in English usage? Quite often, when writing about Swift, Kinbote offers us a whiff of not only this writer's actual novels or satires, but of his scatological tastes...
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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