JM: (the excerpts from the
original comments are below)
(a) Jamie McEwan quoted various
exceptions to my observation that Nabokov's real compassion is
only accessible after a complicated process...
I can agree with him concerning the novels and
stories he brought up: in these we meet N's "overflowing compassion."
Indeed, I was so taken up by the "cruel novels" or
disturbed characters ( Laughter in the Dark, BS, KQK, Lolita, PF,Ada....)
that I unduly restricted the term "compassion" to apply to characters who
are not at all loveable, or those who don't reflect what is good in
ourselves and in our ideals.
And yet, I cannot say that I'm fascinated by the
"crueler" works to the exclusion of the others. I'm intrigued by
them and stimulated to consider how I, personally, deal
with their "mad" themes ( complicity, rejection, humor, pity,
curiosity, etc). Nabokov's Arcady and beauty extract a price
from me.
(b)Jerry Friedman, although I found a
reconciliation, thru Alexandrov, with what had seemed to me a contradictory
remark of yours, it is related to the reasoning you seem to share with A.
Myself, even with no objective literary arguments, such as yours, I
still cannot agree that PF demonstrates some of his character's faith
in ghostly messages, nor that VN believed in them at the time he wrote PF. For
me, there is always VN's irony and even self-mockery to
consider.
(c)Stan,
in Longfellow's Hiawatha there are lines about a glove being
turned inside out, a non trivial image which reminded me of VN's "versipel"
- but here my ignorance about Longellow made me stop. Your information about Shade-Longfellow coincidences is
intriguing.
I was wondering how Shade might have related
his brief "Pale Fire," to a "Comedy" in the Dantesque sense? (not
in Balzac's, of course)*. We know that T.S.Eliot's
Four Quartets was strongly influenced by Dante's Cantos and
even a mythological Sybil.
More to the point, though,
is Eliot's epigraph in The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock , from Dante Alighieri's
hopeless Inferno.
Cf.
Canto 27, lines 61-66: "If I thought that that I was replying to someone
who would ever return to the world, this flame would cease to flicker. But since
no one ever returns from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will
answer you without fear of infamy." (translation obtained from
the internet, probably not Longfellow's). If these
lines were as present as "grimpen & sempiternal" in VN's mind (or the
religious punishment for suicides), what would they mean in the context of
PF and our debate about "afterlife"?
...................................................................................................................................................................
J.McEwan: In reply to Jansy's
statements [Nabokov's compassion in his novels is real, but accessible to
any suffering reader only after a complicated process [...]I've
always been intrigued by VN's cruel protagonists, narcisistic perverts,
murderers... his almost voiceless heroines. ..}I note that there are
many exceptions: Mary, Glory, The Gift, Pnin, The Real Sebastian
Knight, The Return of Chorb spring to mind. The compassion is
readily accessible in all of these--sometimes overflowing. No one
can read Glory, I believe, without being struck by the tremendous warmth
the author feels for its protagonist. Critics, however, seem
most fascinated by the "crueler" works, so we hear much more about
them.The "fatidic webs," I must admit, do seem to enmesh these
works--save, perhaps, for Mary and The Gift.
Jerry
Friedman replies to Jansy Mello[ Shade is killed before he can
"wake at six tomorrow"] One can see this is meaning that his other
predictions are
equally false, or that only the "commonsense" predictions are
false; the supernatural ones are true[...] I'm glad you found a reconciliation
of the contradiction.
Stan K-Bootle to Jerry:
when a mathematical proof ends with Q.E.D.[...] both tradition and syntax demand
that Q.E.D. must follow a precise recap of what one has claimed to have just
proved [...] Allowing for the obvious fact that the so-called Pale Fire Puzzle
is not a mathematical problem, we are still entitled to a clear statement (or
list of statements) before a Q.E.D [...] Which parts of PF are
‘true-fiction’ and which ‘false-fiction?’ World fiction has many credible
accounts of seances and other evidence of ghostly survivals [...] One character
that needs more attention is the Gardner, the last person named in Shade’s final
lines. I identify him with Gerald Gardner, the founder of the modern “Wicca”
[...] I also wonder if the link Wordsworth -> Wadsworth -> Longfellow
-> Dante has been explored? [...] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was first
American to translate Dante’s Comedy [...] Several Shade-Longfellow
“coincidences”...[...] Kinbote also uses “confusely” (p 149)
................................................................................................................................................................
* -I checked an online dictionary for the etymology.
Here is what I got:
Comedy: from O.Fr. comedie, from L. comoedia, from Gk. komoidia "a comedy, amusing spectacle," from komodios "singer in the revels," from komos "revel, carousal" + oidos "singer, poet," from aeidein "to sing." The classical sense is similar
to the modern one, but in the Middle Ages the word came to mean poems and
stories generally (albeit ones with happy endings), and the earliest Eng. sense
is "narrative poem" (cf. Dante's "Commedia"). Comedy aims at entertaining by the fidelity with
which it presents life as we know it; farce
at raising laughter by the outrageous absurdity of the situation or characters
exhibited; extravaganza at diverting by its
fantastic nature; burlesque at tickling the
fancy of the audience by caricaturing plays or actors with whose style it is
familiar. Generalized sense of "quality of being amusing" dates from 1877. Comedian "comic actor" is 1601; meaning
"professional entertainer who tells jokes, etc." is 1898; comédienne, from Fr. fem. form, attested
1860.cf.www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=c&p=20 -
51k.