Simon Rowberry writes:
Dear List,
I know there have been various arguments put forth for both Shade and
Kinbote having written the commentary to the poem 'Pale Fire', but has much
thought been put into the place of Nabokov in this fictional narrative?
Firstly, there is a precedent for this discussion given Nabokov's insertion
of 'Vivian Darkbloom', an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov and pseudonym used by
Nabokov on several occasions, as the biographer of Dolores Haze in John Ray
Jr.'s foreword to Lolita.
I believe that Nabokov has done a similar thing in Pale Fire, and even gone
as far as to imply that he may be the final editor of the edition of the
poem/commentary. This is partially due to the intertextual nods to his older
novels including Pnin in the notes to line 172 and 579, Lolita in the note
to line 680 (the reference to a 1958 hurricane perhaps being a response to
the reception to the publication of the novel in America that year) and the
variant to line 413 (if one considers a reference to a 'nymphet' as an
allusion to Lolita, since I believe he coined the term); and Kinbote's
suggestion of Solus Rex for the title of the poem, alluding to the title of
an unfinished Russian novel which formed the basis of Pale Fire. Are there
any more references to other novels/poems by Nabokov that present the
possibility that Nabokov is part of his own fictional world?
These allusions are complemented by two descriptions of a character who
might be Nabokov. Near the end of the novel, in the note to line 949, there
is a description of 'a baldheaded suntanned professor in a Hawaiian shirt
sat at a round table reading with an ironic expression on his face a Russian
book'. How accurate is this portrait to Nabokov around the time of the
novel's development. Perhaps more tellingly, is the reference in the
foreword, which states 'Professor So-and-so [one of the members of the Shade
committee] has consented to act as our adviser in editing the stuff'. Most
of the other professors in the novel are given at least initials but this
one remains anonymous. Perhaps Professor So-and-so got hold of Kinbote's
notes post-suicide, if one subscribes to this school of thought, and added a
few flourishes of his own. Kinbote admits in the index that he knows little
about lepidoptera, something Nabokov was also keen to emphasize about
Humbert Humbert, that he is the expert and not the character.
Thus, assuming the validity of the thesis that Shade wrote the poem, and
Kinbote/Botkin wrote a commentary thereof, it is perhaps Nabokov who has the
last word as editor? I believe it was mentioned on here previously that
bodkin can also mean 'a person wedged in between two others where there is
proper room for two only' (OED). Here, it is Nabokov who is squeezing in
between Shade and Kinbote in a final layer of Nabokovian deception.
Best,
Simon Rowberry