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Boyd's solution for the "Pale Fire problem" is: "Hazel has reflected
her own experience (...) into Kinbote's Zembla, and shaped Zembla in
turn as to inspire her father." (Brian Boyd, Nabokov's Pale Fire, page
206)
If this is correct, then Nabokov applied to Hazel's ghost the St Thomas
Aquinas' theory of authorship: "(...) an instrumental cause has two
actions. First, there is its strumental action, according to which it
acts not by any virtue of its own but by virtue of the principal agent
of which it is an instrument. Then there is its proper action, which
was fully taken into account by the superior agent who sought to
utilise this property. (...) Applying this theory to Biblical
inspiration, it would seem that a writer's diverse talents are
presupposed and exploited by God." (Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of
Authorship, page 84)