After I wrote about prof. Hurley's incapacity to
see the unity of Pale Fire ( part of my commentary to S.Soloviev's
posting), it occurred to me that Kinbote's foreword, with its
reference to a Biblical "face to face" vision, might indicate
that his entire collection of index-cards gave rise to
a "posthumous" creation, indeed.
Hurley could only discern a scattered bunch of
words with no guiding pattern whereas Kinbote was able to see Shade's poem
as a perfectly finished and complete work. The clue ( "'in a glass, darkly"
) made me think that this "totality" could only be perceived after death
...
My reasoning here still follows CK's theory (
according to her, Shade was not killed but blended into Kinbote, took
refuge somewhere, probably in a mental institution...), although I confess that
her arguments still befuddle me ( contrary to MR,who wrote: I
do like your observation about the editing problems shared by JS and CK",
I confess that I cannot understand where these shared
problems lie).