In response to John
Morris' answer Ron Rosenbaum's question,
"Does anyone else believe Hazel Shade's ghost somehow dictated 'Pale
Fire'?":
[ JMo: Brian Boyd never made such a silly claim. If
you'll reread his "Nabokov's 'Pale Fire'," you'll see that he makes an ingenious
case, well supported by textual evidence, that Hazel Shade's shade influences
Kinbote's commentary in a number of complex and significant areas...Perhaps the
best way to put it is to employ Boyd's phrase (on p. 168) -- Hazel "helps
Kinbote dream" his dream of Zembla......There is never any suggestion that Hazel
has dictated anything. Boyd's argument, page after page, is always for
influence and pattern-making, never ghostwriting. Do I believe in this
interpretation? I certainly do. Anyone who doubts it needs to
counter Boyd's textual points, case by case; he is not offering a hunch, but
rather a sustained argument.] Jerry Friedman
writes:
"...that Kinbote had told Shade at least some of
what becomes the Zemblan parts of his commentary, which influenced the
poem...Boyd makes two main arguments. The first is that Kinbote's
supposedly homosexual fantasy of Zembla spends much less time on
homosexuality ...than on "women spurned"...Hazel was fatally spurned...
Maybe the passages about Disa in "reality" are based on his continued rejection
of his wife or female lover...Boyd's other argument is based on "uncanny
coincidences between poem and commentary"...he suggests Kinbote inspired Shade;
for instance, Kinbote's story of his father's death would have reminded Shade of
those waxwings, which give him the most widely quoted part of his poem.
This is how Hazel indirectly inspired the poem...The flaw is that Boyd tacitly
assumes that Kinbote's Zemblan stories have remained constant, even to
details...We know, though, that Kinbote can change his story in far less time
than that. He changes Gordon Krummholz's article of clothing four times as
he imagines Gordon talking with Gradus...Of course, Kinbote is one of the most
unreliable narrators in literature, and I'd hardly count on his ever having said
anything about Zembla to Shade or anyone. Finally, Boyd argues that survival
after death, namely Hazel's and Shade's, makes sense of the book. I agree
(against those who think it would ruin part of the humor). But we already
have evidence for it in the will-o-the-wisp's message, and I agree with Boyd
that the red admiral at the end is a hint in the same direction. And
that's plenty.
JM: Beautiful
argumentation, well fundamented by examples and a close-reading. I
truly admired your observation, and illustrations, on the lack
of constancy in Kinbote's stories. One sentence struck me in particular ( related to Boyd's argument about
Hazel's and Shade's survival after death which then "makes sense of the
book", due to what you encapuslated in parenthesis: "...it would
ruin part of the humor").
Would you consider that Pale Fire is,
mainly, "a comedy,"then? And you agree, with Boyd, that Pale
Fire "makes sense" because of its subject concerning infernal shades
and recurrent ghosts arriving from some kind of "future" (as in the word
"hereafter").
A funny insight reached me,
quite belatedly: Hazel Shade can never function as an inspiring
Muse...She is condemned, at most, to function as kindly and unsexed
ghost acting over crazed Kinbote. Muses are something altogether
distinct (Shade's is "the versipel", his "odd muse" who is with him
everywhere...! The other, is "a muse in overalls" when he exercises method
A...)