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Re: Fwd: The Pale Fire poem
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----- Forwarded message from wmiale@ACBM.QC.CA -----
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:22:41 -0500
From: Walter Miale <wmiale@ACBM.QC.CA>
Reply-To: Walter Miale <wmiale@ACBM.QC.CA>
Subject: Re: Fwd: The Pale Fire poem
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
From: Walter Miale <wm@greenworldcenter.org>
Re: Fwd: The Pale Fire poem
>It is fascinating to read the discussion about Pale
>Fire.
>
>I have a question - is it correct to judge Pale Fire
>poem as it is without context of the whole book?
Well why not? If I haven't misunderstood him, Brian Boyd has done
this and come to the conclusion that it is a great poem on its own.
My own tentative judgment is that the poem is a brilliant tour de
force, but that if it is thought of as complete in itself and as the
creation of a real person, John Shade, then its elements of parody,
irony, and bathos (some of which are enumerated in my post to this
list yesterday) appear as aesthetic lapses--or even moral lapses
insofar as Shade by his attitude to his daughter's physical being
appears to have compounded her suffering and to have played a role of
which he was unaware in her tragedy.
I know she was no longer alive when her father wrote the poem, but
can Hazel's shade have been happy at his putting on display to the
world her "swollen feet" and "psoriatic fingernails"?
And by the way, there's this bit of parody, or self-parody:
I loathe such things as jazz...
To say that the experience of the poem is immensely enriched by the
preface and commentary is, I think, an understatement, but surely all
will agree that it is so enriched. As you say, "all the parts are so
well balanced," and "the poem works perfectly in the novel."
***********
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