I did memorize Canto One with no problems - it took me a few days. The process is fascinating. I've also met a few people who knew Eugene Onegin by heart. Yeah, they are very good novels.
Vladimir Mylnikov
From: R S Gwynn <rsgwynn1@CS.COM>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tue, January 19, 2010 4:30:22 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHT on Shade as poet
In a message dated 1/19/2010 1:48:07 PM Central Standard Time, glipon@INNERLEA.COM writes:
Let me pose you this question:
What if you were ridiculously
committed to Pale Fire, the poem,
and actually memorized it,
(perhaps you possessed
some extraordinary mnemonic process).
Do you think you could recite it for an hour
to an audience of the academe,
or of a lesser curiosity?
Would they need a transcript, a set of notes?
if so how many pages might that be?
And, of course: "How would it be received?"
Poe says that an audience loses comprehension after 100 lines, so "PF" would be a stretch. But I do think that the poem makes perfect sense without any footnotes whatsoever, especially if we admit the existence (pace Roland Barthes) of a "real" author named John Shade and an audience that is at least partially aware of his other poetry and his family history. For
example, I think that such a reading would make more sense to an audience, even an uninitiated one, than would, say, a reading by Robert Lowell of Life Studies, addressed to an audience who had never heard of Robert Lowell. Kinbote's "good" notes are helpful but hardly necessary to a reading of the poem.
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