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thoughts: 4000 times
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Laurence Hochard unveils another of those eerie coincidences between poem and Commentary in Pale Fire. I think the idea that it might be Nabokov’s “mistake”, a genuine oversight, can be ruled out. James Ramey’s demonstration that so-called “mistakes” in Pale Fire are actually intentional and the result of careful calculation is rather convincing (“Pale Fire’s Black Crown.” Nabokov Online Journal VI (2012).
I am not even sure that the term “inconsistency” applies here. In fact, like other such coincidences, it lends itself to two possible readings. Simplest of course is to consider that, as Kinbote writes after Shade, he can freely allude to the poem in his Commentary. His mention of the “pale fire of the incinerator” in the Foreword would be another obvious example of such tactics which occasionally engender the temporal “manipulation” that L. Hochard observes.
Another interpretation, now as old as the hills (and the origin of the long internal authorship controversy), is that such coincidences are meant to alert the reader to the fact that poem and Commentary were written by the same author – or by two authors working together in close collaboration (if I may be so bold as to allude to my “theory” again).
René Alladaye
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I am not even sure that the term “inconsistency” applies here. In fact, like other such coincidences, it lends itself to two possible readings. Simplest of course is to consider that, as Kinbote writes after Shade, he can freely allude to the poem in his Commentary. His mention of the “pale fire of the incinerator” in the Foreword would be another obvious example of such tactics which occasionally engender the temporal “manipulation” that L. Hochard observes.
Another interpretation, now as old as the hills (and the origin of the long internal authorship controversy), is that such coincidences are meant to alert the reader to the fact that poem and Commentary were written by the same author – or by two authors working together in close collaboration (if I may be so bold as to allude to my “theory” again).
René Alladaye
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/