When it comes to selected strong opinions and quotes one has to tread lightly. Today’s elected sentence was written by Eugene Onegin’s annotator. It may be profitably redirected to another one, namely Charles Kinbote, and his reproduction of John Shade’s “canceled readings” and physical presence:

"An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying canceled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count."Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), from the Introduction to Eugene Onegin (1964).

Foreword: “In my notes to the poem the reader will find these canceled readings. Their places are indicated, or at least suggested, by the draftings of established lines in their immediate neighborhood. In a sense, many of them are more valuable artistically and historically than some of the best passages in the final text [   ] His misshapen body, that gray mop of abundant hair, the yellow nails of his pudgy fingers, the bags under his lusterless eyes, were only intelligible if regarded as the waste products eliminated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of perfection which purified and chiseled his verse. He was his own cancellation.” (single instance of a doubled “l”)

John Shade: Pale Fire “In method B the hand supports the thought,// The abstract battle is concretely fought./ The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar/ A canceled sunset or restore a star.”

Lines 433-434: “none could bear the sight of her automatic smile as she turned from the agony of the disclosure to the polite trivialities required of her. She would be canceling an illumination, or discussing hospital cots with the head nurse, or merely ordering breakfast for two in the sea cave …”

Line 922: “After this line, instead of lines 923-930, we find the following, lightly deleted, variant: “All artists have been born in what they call…” Having struck this out, the poet tried another theme, but these lines he also canceled: “England where poets flew the highest, now/Wants them to plod and Pegasus to plough...”

Many of the references in Pale Fire to “to cancel” and “cancelation,” are credited to the poet and taken as “variants.”  If fairy chess or “fairy” literary moves are to be considered part of a deliberate authorial ploy, we must remember that Kinbote’s “variants” belong to the novel and, therefore, that they are “results,” i.e., they count.

Sybil, however…: “straightened herself, and swept the black and gray hair off her forehead, and stared at me, and said: "What do you mean — shown any of it? He never shows anything unfinished. Never, never. He will not even discuss it with you until it is quite, quite finished."

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Other references to “canceling” procedures: Line 149: …“But the vigilant stutterer had finally exploded in spasmodic speech…; and the fugitives had hardly covered a dozen miles, when a confused blaze in the darkness before them, at the intersection of the old and new highways, revealed a roadblock that at least had the merit of canceling both routes at one stroke.”

Line 171: “Within minutes after the King and the actor had clattered down the backstairs of the Royal Theater, every wing in the sky and on the ground had been accounted for — such was the efficiency of the government. During the next weeks not one private or commercial plane was allowed to take off, and the inspection of transients became so rigorous and lengthy that international lines decided to cancel stopovers at Onhava.”

I should have included here references to lines 433-434 (“canceling an illumination”), but I decided to leave them close to John Shade’s own “canceled sunset.”

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