In 2006, in an N-L posting about Netko/Nikto/Botkin and Nonnons, George Shimanovich wrote:"I think that is what happened to Kinbote (Botkin) in PF. In his delusional self he searched and found Zembla's reflection in Shade's poem. Alas, when the mirror image dissipated that ugly thing remained. Belatedly he recognized that reflection worked the other way: the art reflected him. Isn't that when he killed himself?

 

JM: Somewhat belatedly, I wonder what was the "ugly thing" that remained, or how did Shade's art reflect Kinbote/Botkin.But I found an example of anamorphosis in PF, in relation to how Kinbote envisaged Shade's "Pale Fire."

 

Kinbote writes, in the foreword, that he can date every note-card from July 2 until the moment of John Shade's decease. I'll underline the lines that describe the effect of anamorphosis: "Canto Four was begun on July 19..., the last third of its text ...is supplied by a Corrected Draft. This is extremely rough in appearance, teeming with devastating erasures and cataclysmic insertions, and does not follow the lines of the card as rigidly as the Fair Copy does. Actually, it turns out to be beautifully accurate when you once make the plunge and compel yourself to open your eyes in the limpid depths under its confused surface. It contains not one gappy line, not one doubtful reading[   ] one of our professed Shadeans...affirmed without having seen the manuscript of the poem that it "consists of disjointed drafts none of which yields a definite text"... to asperse the competence, and perhaps honesty, of its present editor and commentator."

 

In the next paragraph he states:. "Another pronouncement...refers to a structural matter...: 'None can say how long John Shade planned his poem to be, but it is not improbable that what he left represents only a small fraction of the composition he saw in a glass, darkly.' ...I shall even assert (as our shadows still walk without us) that there remained to be written only one line of the poem...which would have been identical to line 1 and would have completed the symmetry of the structure, with its two identical central parts, solid and ample, forming together with the shorter flanks twin wings of five hundred verses each...Knowing Shade’s combinational turn of mind and subtle sense of harmonic balance, I cannot imagine that he intended to deform the faces of his crystal by meddling with its predictable growth..."

 

It's curious to realize that, should the indication of anamorphosis prove to be a valid one, we'll find that Shade's rough manuscript and the "confused surface" of his work shalll acquire a "harmonic balance," with no "gappy lines" left out, thanks to the revelations offered by some sort of reflecting mirror. Charles Kinbote sees himself as the corrective mirror that will reproduce the poem's perfect structure.

However, there's a second possible indication of an anamorphosis. This one brings us over to Vladimir Nabokov's own creative process (when he envisions the complete novel and hastens to take down in words that which he has seen. Cf. different interviews in SO). According to Prof. Hurley, in a reverse order than the one described by Kinbote, John Shade has had a glimpse of his finished work "in a glass, darkly" (i.e: his inspiration was partial and limited.) and what he manages to register is even more fragmentary. There is no magic mirror either in Art or in his note-cards that'll represent his creative encounter with something transcendent.  His death dissolves every possible key to his mysterious project.  .