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Re: thoughts: 4000 times
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Dear Carolyn and List,
I've
been a list member for a few years now and I know about the different
readings of PF (the single-author theories -shadeans versus
kinboteans- , the "ghosts" theory as well as alternate
readings like yours and Matt Roth's and even the latest one
[René Alladaye's] involving 2 authors collaborating to write both
poem and commentary..
I've always been slightly surprised that
readers tried to "solve" the novel by looking for a hidden
author for poem and commentary. I'm well aware of the echoes
between the two, of course, but for me , we err if we try to line up
all the elements of the story on one rational plane. It is first an
aesthetic error because it deprives the novel of one of its dimension
and best achievements: its irresolvable tension and reduces it
to a banal (if ultra sophisticated) hide-and-seek detective story. It
is secondly a hermeneutic error which blocks the way to a full
understanding of the novel.
The novel must not be "solved";
it must be read on two different planes at the same time, so
that the two sources of light that are Shade and Kinbote produce the
holographic image which is the ultimate goal of PF. (a variation on
the "nonnon" metaphor of my previous post)
Now,
here's how I see the general structure of the novel, the lines along
which the novel is built:
Shade and Kinbote are two separate
characters on one plane, with all the comedy and poignancy.
They
are one and the same entity on a parallel plane, but Kinbote is not
Shade's "secondary repressed personality",
Shade is not
a hypocrit , whose real personality is revealed by Kinbote as your
comment seems to imply.
Kinbote is a fictionalized projection of
some aspects of Shade's personality, more precisely former
aspects which he more or less managed to overcome -this explains why
Kinbote is younger than Shade- ; Kinbote's tribulations are a
fictionalization of how Shade overcame his personal difficulties
Now, I'll give an example of how I
support my hypothesis:
That Shade and Kinbote are one entity
is hinted at from the first, in the foreword, when Kinbote recounts
his first tête-à-tête with Shade; it takes place outside
Parthenossicus Hall; now, the name of these creepers derives
from the Greek parthenos, "virgin" because of their
ability to form seeds without pollination. Parthenogenesis is
a clonal mode of reproduction; the offspring are therefore clones. A
few lines before and after the mention of Parthenocissus
Hall, several doublings
occur: first at the end of the previous paragraph when Kinbote is
asked why he has installed two
ping-pong tables in his basement, a question he strangely evades;
then, while he stands on the porch with the poet, a snowflake settles
on Shade's wrist watch. "Crystal to crystal" says Shade,
twinning his watch
glass and the snowflake and giving birth in the reader's mind to the
image of the falling snowflake fusing
with its reflection on the wrist glass, two
becoming one; and
finally they observe two
lads similarly dressed
in colourful winter clothes -retrospectively evoking Charles Xavier
escape in a red winter outfit.
Aside
from these arresting clonal images, the reader feels that this scene
has a strange charge to it -I think every PF reader remembers it even
after a first reading- : the stillness (they stand on the porch), the
deliberate slowness (Kinbote pulls his gloves on, finger by finger)
the suspended time (Shade is waiting for his wife who is apparently
late) ... something strange is taking place: a parthénogenetic split
giving birth to Kinbote and Shade.
This
is the place in the novel where the second, parallel plane takes off,
while the "straight story" -as David Lynch would say-, or
the first plane proceeds its way. When the two planes come into
contact, this is when the reader feels the teasing mystery.
Laurence
Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 11:26:20 -0700
From: chaiselongue@ATT.NET
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] thoughts: 4000 times
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Dear Laurence,
I do not know how long you have been a list member or how much outside reading on Pale Fire you have done, but there is an alternate reading of Pale Fire that does not recognize Mr Shade and Dr Kinbote as entirely separate entities. There is some evidence that Charles is a secondary repressed personality, "alter ego" if you will, who has been spying on his "older brother" John since his birth (that subject has been recently discussed I'm sure you noticed).
But since he has the best seat in the house, so to speak, he sees all and recalls all. What he understands of course is hard to say. But he is the "unreliable narrator" who breaks the rule, at least according to this interpretation of the novel. I
personally find him to be much more reliable than his older brother.
Carolyn
From: laurence hochard <laurence.hochard@HOTMAIL.FR>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Mon, May 13, 2013 5:37:30 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] thoughts: 4000 times
I wonder if anybody has ever noticed a slight inconsistency in Kinbote's account of his spying on the Shades.in his note to line 181:
"On another trip to the bathroom one hour and a half later, at sunrise, I found the light transferred to the bedroom, and smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time - but no matter."
He alludes to "At least / four thousand times your pillow has been creased / by our two heads (l 275/6)" of course, but at the time of his spying, he couldn't know since he hadn't read the poem and therefore, he can't have smiled indulgently; he can only do so in retrospect, when writing his commentary.
Could the inconsistecy be deliberate, here as well as about Kinbote's birthdate? Did VN want to discreetly blur the time landmarks so as to maintain ambiguity as to the identity of the characters? Or are they simply
mistakes?
(Apologies if the subject has already been discussed on the forum; I searched the archives but didn't find anything)
Laurence Hochard
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