George,
your sentence puzzles me: "Because these doubts are ours, they are
based on our generic suppositions – not
on specific facts (read, sentences) of
fictional world of PF." Aren't we all restricted to our
suppositions ( read, interpretations) about any fictional creation since these
are the only "facts" which the workings
of language offer?
Thank you
for writing about our shared belief
that Gradus is "important if not critical to fuller and better
reading of PF." ( Of PF, if not of art in general, as you seemed
to suggest later on).
It is also my interpretation
that Gradus is an invention
of Kinbote's. You made a very good point by
stressing that CK "invents him to connect Shade’s art (the poem) with
Zembla fantasy. He had to as Shade did no cooperate, so to speak, with Zembla -
in his poem."
You
concluded: [Speaking of reversal (cure) of split personality
disorder , I admit that Botkin-Kinbote became united with Gradus at the moment
he pulls the trigger on himself at novel’s fictional
end.].
Do you mean "split
personality disorder" as in some psychotic breakdown? This is quite an
interesting idea when you observe that this kind of cure
arrives through the experience of "death" ( not necessarily
a physical death).
You added
a sentence that described the impending "crash of his
imagined world". I wonder why (at our present discussion) nobody
brought up the various "crashes" that take place in Pale Fire: the waxwing
against the window, King Alfin against a building, Oleg's accident with a
toboggan and several others...
Perhaps
even Hazel's suicide may be heard crashing through the crackling ice after
she stood at the "azure" entrance of the bar where she'd been
jilted!
There is
also a connected theme, dealing with "dropping", "throwing oneself out of a
window", "parachuting"...
Trying to
recollect other "crashes" I thought of CK sighting of JS at the begining of his
story. JS had slipped on the ice and fell, and his heavy crash gave start to the
engine of his car... Like Nabokov and his wife, it was Sybil who
drove JS to classes and visits (JS didn't own a car, or did he?), but,
unlike VN, Shade did his own type-writing? He also seemed to be a
keen observer of butterflies ( or, at least, of the smaller details in the
coloring of a Red Admiral's wings)
Carolyn
Kunin sent us a delightful list of questions, such as the one about "Heathcliff's toothbrush" (by John Sutherland). One
such item occurred to me now: why did Shade often name a tree
"shag-bark". Kinbote informed us it is a "Juniper" ( a great favourite
among birds and catterpillars and cicadas?) The cadence is nice but Juniper
also sounds lovely, carrying a suggestion of June and Juno and...Oh,
well.
Speaking
of sounds there is disagreeable reference of Gradus deriving erotic
pleasure while squeezing a gross swelling. The selected term
was "comedo". There is a medical term: "comedocarcinoma", but
is comedo a common word in English usage? Quite
often, when writing about Swift, Kinbote offers us a whiff of not only this
writer's actual novels or satires, but of his scatological
tastes...
Jansy Mello