----- Forwarded message from michael.glynn@btinternet.com -----

    Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 18:39:30 -0000

    From: michael glynn <michael.glynn@btinternet.com>

Reply-To: michael glynn <michael.glynn@btinternet.com>

 Subject: Re:      Pale Fire

      To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Dear Sir - re Shade's poem and its alleged greatness.  Could i offer a few

thoughts extracted from Vladimir Nabokov and the Problem of Seeing?  Many

Thanks, Michael Glynn

 When Kinbote finally  learns that Shade's poem is wholly oblivious to his

Zemblan idyll, Kinbote's assessment of the great man's work  is trenchant and

pointedly Nabokovian.  To Kinbote, Shade's poem is simply  "an

autobiographical, eminently Appalachian, rather old-fashioned narrative in a

neo-Popian prosodic style."  I would suggest that Kinbote's verdict is intended

to command the assent of the reader, and that Nabokov's treatment of Shade and

his poem is in fact ironic.  This is a notion  that would discomfit some

critics:   Herbert Grabes holds the poem to be "an extremely elaborate work of

art, typical of the later phases of some literary epoch,"  and Andrew Field

sees it as an important work, one worthy of critical study in isolation from

the rest of the text. Brian Boyd, a staunch champion of Shade as presiding

genius in the novel, hails the poem somewhat hyperbolically as a "masterpiece"

and "a deliberate challenge to both Pound's Cantos and Eliot's Four Quartets."

G.M. Hyde argues that Shade's poem reveals a serious and deep kinship with the

work of Frost in that it manifests the latter's characteristic stoicism in the

face of "terrible and incomprehensible things."    Others have, however,

expressed reservations about Shade's poetic offering.  Douglas Fowler finds the

poem's heroic couplet form to be limiting whilst Alvin B. Kernan argues that the

poem should be read as "an extended and amusing spoof." In my view, the

challenge Nabokov set himself in writing "Shade's" poem was to produce a highly

competent but highly conventional piece of work,  one which would ultimately be

deemed an artistic failure.  Nabokov appears deliberately to over-egg the

pudding, having Shade present us with a daughter who is not only plump and

plain but also unpopular, squinty-eyed, clumsy, swollen-footed, psoriatic and,

perhaps not surprisingly in view of her multiple afflictions, deeply mentally

troubled.  Furthermore, it appears to have gone generally unremarked that this

central conceit of the plain teenager rejected by her peers is a suspiciously

mawkish one, the stuff of adolescent fiction or any number of late twentieth

century pop songs.  A brief comparative exercise will, I believe, throw into

relief Nabokov's slyly ironic intent.  Consider the following three extracts:

1) It must have broke your poor little heart

When the boys used to say to you looked better in the dark

......................................................................

The teacher would ask a question

And you would always raise your hand

But somehow you never got your turn

My eyes would fill with water, inside I'd burn, oh yes I did

2) At Christmas parties, games were rough, no doubt,

And one shy little guest might be left out;

But let's be fair: while children of her age

Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,

My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,

And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.

3) I learned the truth at seventeen

That love was meant for beauty queens

And high school girls with clear skinned smiles

Who married young and then retired.

The valentines I never knew

The Friday night charades of youth

Were spent on one more beautiful

At seventeen I learned the truth

And those of us with ravaged faces

Lacking in the social graces

Desperately remained at home

Inventing lovers on the phone

Who called to say - Come dance with me

As will be readily appreciated, the first and third extracts,  song lyrics from

The Chi-Lites' Homely Girl and Janis Ian's At Seventeen respectively, are

characterised by a degree of triteness.  However, the second extract, from

Shade's poem, is almost identical in terms of subject matter and tone.  Nabokov

was too much the literary sophisticate unconsciously to produce such lachrymose

and  hackneyed work.  If, as I maintain, Shade's poem is in part mawkish and

conventional, it is because Nabokov intends it to be so.  Nabokov is suggesting

that Shade's attempt artistically to confront the loss of his daughter fails

where Kinbote's distorted and distorting exploration of loss succeeds.  As I

have already suggested, Shade was instinctively Symbolist, concerned ultimately

with there rather than here.  However, when he addresses the tragic situation of

his daughter he attempts to do  so in a direct, immediate and sincere way,

thereby hoping to give the reader an unmediated slice of  reality.   I believe

that Nabokov wishes us to see this as a doomed attempt.  Not for nothing is

Shade so called. The poet's effort is eclipsed by the madman's commentary.

When Shade attempts  to evoke his daughter's tragic situation  in conventional,

heartfelt verse, he is betrayed into triteness.  It is Kinbote's estranging

method that can capture the essence of a tragic reality.  In order to evoke the

twin pains of exile and unhappy marriage, Kinbote, via oblique means,

triumphantly transcends what Shklovsky termed "the sphere of automatised

perception."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----- End forwarded message -----

Dear Sir - re Shade's poem and its alleged greatness.  Could i offer a few thoughts extracted from Vladimir Nabokov and the Problem of Seeing?  Many Thanks, Michael Glynn

 

 When Kinbote finally  learns that Shade’s poem is wholly oblivious to his Zemblan idyll, Kinbote’s assessment of the great man’s work  is trenchant and pointedly Nabokovian.  To Kinbote, Shade’s poem is simply  “an autobiographical, eminently Appalachian, rather old-fashioned narrative in a neo-Popian prosodic style.”  I would suggest that Kinbote’s verdict is intended to command the assent of the reader, and that Nabokov’s treatment of Shade and his poem is in fact ironic.  This is a notion  that would discomfit some critics:   Herbert Grabes holds the poem to be “an extremely elaborate work of art, typical of the later phases of some literary epoch,”  and Andrew Field sees it as an important work, one worthy of critical study in isolation from the rest of the text. Brian Boyd, a staunch champion of Shade as presiding genius in the novel, hails the poem somewhat hyperbolically as a “masterpiece” and “a deliberate challenge to both Pound’s Cantos and Eliot’s Four Quartets.” G.M. Hyde argues that Shade’s poem reveals a serious and deep kinship with the work of Frost in that it manifests the latter’s characteristic stoicism in the face of “terrible and incomprehensible things.”    Others have, however, expressed reservations about Shade’s poetic offering.  Douglas Fowler finds the poem’s heroic couplet form to be limiting whilst Alvin B. Kernan argues that the poem should be read as “an extended and amusing spoof.” In my view, the challenge Nabokov set himself in writing “Shade’s” poem was to produce a highly competent but highly conventional piece of work,  one which would ultimately be deemed an artistic failure.  Nabokov appears deliberately to over-egg the pudding, having Shade present us with a daughter who is not only plump and plain but also unpopular, squinty-eyed, clumsy, swollen-footed, psoriatic and, perhaps not surprisingly in view of her multiple afflictions, deeply mentally troubled.  Furthermore, it appears to have gone generally unremarked that this central conceit of the plain teenager rejected by her peers is a suspiciously mawkish one, the stuff of adolescent fiction or any number of late twentieth century pop songs.  A brief comparative exercise will, I believe, throw into relief Nabokov’s slyly ironic intent.  Consider the following three extracts:

 

1) It must have broke your poor little heart

When the boys used to say to you looked better in the dark

…………………………………………………………….

The teacher would ask a question

And you would always raise your hand

But somehow you never got your turn

My eyes would fill with water, inside I’d burn, oh yes I did

 

2) At Christmas parties, games were rough, no doubt,

And one shy little guest might be left out;

But let’s be fair: while children of her age

Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

That she’d helped paint for the school pantomime,

My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,

And like a fool I sobbed in the men’s room.

 

3) I learned the truth at seventeen

That love was meant for beauty queens

And high school girls with clear skinned smiles

Who married young and then retired.

The valentines I never knew

The Friday night charades of youth

Were spent on one more beautiful

At seventeen I learned the truth

 

And those of us with ravaged faces

Lacking in the social graces

Desperately remained at home

Inventing lovers on the phone

Who called to say – Come dance with me    

       

As will be readily appreciated, the first and third extracts,  song lyrics from The Chi-Lites’ Homely Girl and Janis Ian’s At Seventeen respectively, are characterised by a degree of triteness.  However, the second extract, from Shade’s poem, is almost identical in terms of subject matter and tone.  Nabokov was too much the literary sophisticate unconsciously to produce such lachrymose and  hackneyed work.  If, as I maintain, Shade’s poem is in part mawkish and conventional, it is because Nabokov intends it to be so.  Nabokov is suggesting that Shade’s attempt artistically to confront the loss of his daughter fails where Kinbote’s distorted and distorting exploration of loss succeeds.  As I have already suggested, Shade was instinctively Symbolist, concerned ultimately with there rather than here.  However, when he addresses the tragic situation of his daughter he attempts to do  so in a direct, immediate and sincere way, thereby hoping to give the reader an unmediated slice of  reality.   I believe that Nabokov wishes us to see this as a doomed attempt.  Not for nothing is Shade so called. The poet’s effort is eclipsed by the madman’s commentary.  When Shade attempts  to evoke his daughter’s tragic situation  in conventional, heartfelt verse, he is betrayed into triteness.  It is Kinbote’s estranging method that can capture the essence of a tragic reality.  In order to evoke the twin pains of exile and unhappy marriage, Kinbote, via oblique means, triumphantly transcends what Shklovsky termed “the sphere of automatised perception.”  

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