PS:  I should have stated my point more succinctly concerning the last lines of my latest posting.  Ron R. wrote: “There's an old saying that when you find you're in a hole best stop digging. I couldn't help but think of it--and of Occams's razor (entities should not be multiplied beypnd necessity") when reading Brian Boyd's latest attempt to force the text of Pale Fire to offer evidence in favor of his  assertion that Hazel Shade is the real author of "Pale Fire" and <Pale Fire>.”

Don’t these lines suggest a special “reality” for Hazel ( as the real author of poem and novel)?  Such a belief is the only possible reason for his fanning the fire of a debate related to B.Boyd’s more recent essay to accompany the new (re?)issue of PF,the poem – which I haven’t yet been able to read.     

 

 

 

JM: A great many were written in Russian, while Nabokov was under the sway of Russian culture and the prevailing beliefs at that period.

They a good point of departure when we want to compare his later developments to see how his ideas about "the other world" changed and became less general and more personal.

 

There are puzzling points when I read comments about "ghosts" in Nabokov's work. Quite often these ghosts seem to gain life outside literature and speak directly to the person (who is also a reader.) Extra-textual ghosts?

 

Nabokov, of course, is always serious even when he is building a satire: he is expressing real emotions, experiences, fears. One should distinguish when he writes on "ghosts of madness" (hallucinations and delusional constructions), or "literary ghosts or ploys," and "synchronicities or coincidences", "links and bobolinks", real "correlated patterns" artistically registered - unexplained experiences which serve to indicate that not everything is totally understood or rendered clear by Western science.  Nabokov also describes different fantasies about the "hereafter". His conception about "eternity" is never totally convergent. There are different Nabokovian paradises, hells and eternities. When one uses these words at times it is necessary to state one's textual point of departure to highlight their idiosyncrasies. Intermediares between mankind and gods are equally important ( Hermes, Iris, Seraphs, Prophets. devils)

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