Dear Stan,
The split personality theory is not Shade/Kinbote but rather Kinbote/Botkin. VN: ``I wonder if any reader will notice the following details: 1) that the nasty commentator is not an ex-king and not even Dr. Kinbote, but Prof. Vseslav Botkin, a Russian and a madman...''.
There are other details (in VN's sense of stuff that should be obvious) about K's madness that seem to have escaped wide notice. K's behavior towards Shade and Shade's work, at least in intent, has significant affinities to the treatment of artists in certain modern tyrannies, a profound concern of VN's: K wants to dictate to Shade his subject (himself); he spies on his author; when his desire is not realized, K inserts his own forged drafts, disparages Shade as unhappy and immoral, and forces his own narrative on the reader anyway. Shade is to be K's bard, singing of imagined greatness, not unlike (in intent) the Soviet artist forced to become Stalin's bard, or rather the bard of the man Stalin dreamed himself to be. K shares more than one fascination of another tyranny: the Nordic sagas and varangian blood, the onomastics of family names, various kinds of booga-booga mystical claptrap, Wagner, admiration of male beauty, vegetarianism, among other points of reference. On careful examination, Charles is a remarkable example of poshlust, a materialist with a powerful car and snazzy wardrobe, a champagne drinker with a fondness for caviar, a gossip, a snob of the first degree, a pedant who is blind and deaf to beauty that is not a reflection of himself. He is ridiculous, but no less malignant for that. Charles is mad, yes; but his madness is of a kind with tyrants.
Steve
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.