From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 10:43 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Re: Boyd re the Pale Fire poem




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    Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 20:21:38 EST
    From: STADLEN@aol.com
Reply-To: STADLEN@aol.com
 Subject: Re: Boyd re the Pale Fire poem
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I wrote on 10 December:

< I am grateful to Brian Boyd for so eloquently and precisely defending Shade's "Pale Fire". But how does he know that "we return to the first line"? Why should we accept Kinbote's assertion? How, even, do we know that there would have been only one more line? The symmetry between parts 1 and 4, and 2 and 3, would be thus preserved, but how do we know Shade wanted to preserve it? >

Brian Boyd replied on 16 December:

<< [...] That the quality of the poem was as high as Nabokov could achieve seems to be confirmed by every recorded comment he made about it:
 
?I should have written you sooner but I had an intense period of inspiration that I badly needed for a long poem (part of my new novel) and kept imbibing it while it lasted for hours on end? (to Edmund Wilson, 27 Feb 1961, Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya).
 
Nabokov could have ?badly needed? inspiration even to parody ineptitude or limitation, but he would surely have needed it even more to attain excellence in a language not his own. His gratitude seems to point toward the second reading.
 
In reply to some questions Andrew Field sent while preparing Nabokov: His Life in Art, Véra Nabokov answered  on 11 December 1965, quoting VN directly:
 
? ?To be quite frank, Shade?s poem is a rather good Nabokov poem, and the allusion to Frost is incidental and meant only to give local color.? We read somewhere in a review that the poem was mediocre, obscure and a parody of something or other. Sources: ?A pinch of Pope perhaps, as form goes.? My husband admits that apart from the poem about the little horse in the wintry woods, he has not read much Frost.?
 
Clearly V and V were surprised and amused to read that ?the poem was mediocre, obscure and a parody.? And the comment about Frost may be set against Abe Socher?s claim to a source for the opening of ?Pale Fire? in Frost?s poem ?Of a Winter Evening? (http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/socher.htm).
 
Just after completing the poem in February 1961, Nabokov drafted a letter to the New Yorker, asking if they would be prepared to publish the whole of the ? Pale Fire? poem in a single issue. It would have been a strange move to ask them to publish a poem by an invented poet that he thought was artistically flawed?and indeed as we know he would later call Shade ?by far the greatest of invented poets? (SO 59). Since he had taken the trouble to compose fine poems for his invented Vasily Shishkov?which would be hailed as masterpieces by his critical foe Georgy Adamovich?this is no mean claim.
 
When the magazine Show asked Nabokov a few months later in 1961 if he had anything they could publish, Véra answered, offering ?Pale Fire?:
 
?The poem has 999 lines, consists of four cantos, and, while it contains the essence of the poet?s life story, presents also his philosophy and its history. The last [1000th] line was never written because the poet was killed after the 999th? (VéN to Richard Schickel, 18 May 1961).
 
This would seem to address the concern of Anthony Stadlen (Nabokv-L, 10 Dec 2005, asking of me: ?But how does he know that ?we return to the first line?? Why should we accept Kinbote's assertion? How, even, do we know that there would have been only one more line??). Nabokov had also noted in his draft letter to the New Yorker: ?this long poem which its (invented) author the American poet John Shade did not quite complete (when he died before writing the last[,] one thousandth[,] line).? Nabokov at least intended that Shade intended just one more line, but never wrote it. It would presumably have rhymed with ?lane?  in 999. Since Shade particularly liked ?the consonne d?appui,? it may have ended with the ?l? of ?lane,? as well as the rest of the syllable, as in ? slain,? the first line of the poem. But we do not and cannot know. [...]. >>

I am delighted that Brian Boyd has given more evidence to confirm Nabokov's own high opinion of the poem "Pale Fire", and that he has responded to my questions about line 1000 of the poem "Pale Fire" with important (albeit extra-textual) evidence. That Nabokov intended that Shade intended line 1000 to be the last is a fascinating piece of information, but it has the same standing as Nabokov's (equally extra-textual) statements about Kinbote's killing himself after completing his work on the book or about the whereabouts of the crown jewels.

Perhaps Nabokov thought that the beautiful lead-up to line 1000, together with the symmetry of cantos 1 and 4, and 2 and 3, was enough to convey that line 1000 must be the last.

However, my question remains: Why should we accept Kinbote's assertion (as Brian Boyd apparently did until I asked him why) that Shade intended line 1000 to be identical with line 1? The "slain" at the end of line 1 makes sense if it is followed by line 2: "[...] the waxwing slain / By the false azure [...]". It would be rather odd and clumsy standing alone at the end of line 1000. Is it not a sign of Kinbote's insensitivity that he is able to countenance such an oddity, and a sign of our susceptibility to seduction by Kinbote if we are able to countenance it?

Might not Nabokov have intended his readers to find their way out of the unreliable narrator Kinbote's seductions and imagine what line 1000 might have been? What about a competition for the most satisfying line 1000?

Anthony Stadlen

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