it actually is that complicated, you read it wrong, it's not meant to be read like a regular book
https://i.imgur.com/D9voBWo.jpg
How to read Pale Fire?
you're meant to read the poem cantos in front of you like this https://www.amazon.com.au/Pale-Fire-Poem-Cantos-Shade/dp/1584234318 so you can rearrange them and get new meaning out of them, the text is basically just a very well written puzzle to figure out.
how would rearranging them yield a solution? and what clue is there for an order? it cant be trial and error >you're meant to read the poem cantos in front of you like this
according to who? kinbote suggests reading the commentary with the poem back and forth with two different copies but thats obviously a joke on the commentary's irrelevance. and this edition with the cards is probably just a humoring of shade and nabokov's compositional methods since they both wrote on cards. >the text is basically just a very well written puzzle to figure out.
there are proposed solutions that explain a lot of synchronicities very well like the shades manifestations from the afterlife theory without any card rearranging.
Now the commentary for line 493, with “Kinbote” rambling on suicide:
“With this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one’s being, no wonder one weighs on one’s palm with a dreary smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather hardly bigger than a castle gate key or a boy’s seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an inviting abyss.
“I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare BOTKIN (note the correct spelling), and that ladies should swallow a lethal dose or drown with clumsy Ophelia. …”
[capitalization mine, everything else Nabokov’s/Kinbote’s own, exactly as it appears in the text, rounded parentheses included]
As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note. He kills himself after creating this fantastic mimicry of the dead American poet Shade, his suicided daughter Hazel, the eccentric Zemblan king Kinbote, and more besides, as a meditation on mortality and the afterlife. (Also a layered jab at Barthes’s “death of the author” theory, as Nabokov is explicitly giving the correct key to his work).
Kinbote/Botkin is hence indeed a “regicide” (as in the Zemblan language), as the “king” (Kinbote/Botkin) indeed kills himself, fulfilling the apparently strange digression on suicide by Kinbote in the notes to line 493, the death-obsession throughout the work, and the reference to the “bare bodkin/botkin” of Hamlet’s famous suicide soliloquy.
In line 347 (within the context of the fictional story), Hazel Shade, playing a Ouija-like game with a supposed poltergeist in the barn of their house, also writes down this “jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect … as a short line of simple letter-groups,” which Kinbote dutifully “transcribe[s]” for us:
“pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant last tal told”
This is roughly: “Pa* at a lane do not go to Goldsworth’s** where a tale of a foreign land told”, or, more coherently (and in Vladdie’s own explanation): “father not to go across the lane to Goldsworth's where a tale from a foreign land will be told".
*[padre, pa, papa, pada, roughly from the assumed proto-Indo-European *átta for “father”]
**[Goldsworth, the judge’s house Kinbote is renting which Shade gets shot in front of]
Hence, within the context of the story, Hazel Shade also DOES get a message from a poltergeist/floating orb warning of Shade’s upcoming death, but it doesn’t matter anyway because this is simply a blind to the deeper layer of the story, that V. Botkin created all these characters himself (perhaps as reflections of different parts of his personality) before killing himself.
Also, the israeliteels are hidden in Kobaltana.
>As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note.
does he ever say that? the only interviews ive found only said that botkin wrote the commentary and that he kills himself before the index is finished. >(Also a layered jab at Barthes’s “death of the author” theory, as Nabokov is explicitly giving the correct key to his work).
eh. he wouldn't want a puzzle piece to be missing and then having to give it in an interview. hes just nudging us with a hint. a conscious jab at the death of the author is too tastelessly statement-like for him imo. >but it doesn’t matter anyway because this is simply a blind to the deeper layer of the story
it does matter. even if somehow the kinbotean/botkinian theory is right and is the ultimate layer (which i dont think is the case cause at that point botkin writing the entire novel is a revelation that isnt that much more revelatory than something obvious that the reader already knows, that is, nabokov being behind the entire novel, only now its another fictional russian that killed himself? so what?) its still not a good idea to skip the ghost stuff, which reveal a story that i find much more interesting, elegant, symmetrical, thematically relevant. id bet my money on the afterlife being the ultimate layer and ive seen more evidence for it than that botkin wrote the entire novel, poem and all.
[...]
This coincidence of Kinbote playing dumb as to knowing where Shade’s Shakespeare allusion came from, but also just by astronomical odds having the exact work it came from in Zemblan (and no other of Shakespeare’s works with him), and in an earlier note including the exact passage the title came from because it reminds him of one of the variants of Shade’s lines, is clearly too much to be a coincidence, and suggests a meta-narrator playing games with the reader over Kinbote’s head (in this case, not just Nabokov, as he does in many of his works, but specifically Botkin, cluing you into how artificial a creation Kinbote is).
he endorsed the reading that botkin wrote the index, but im not convinced that botkin was conscious of being separate from kinbote and that the things like the timon of athens joke was his intent rather than nabokov's, or that shade and everything else was his creation rather than just nabokov's. >For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he Professor Kinbote. He is Professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman.
You read it straight through (foreword, poem, commentary, index). Clearly, reading the poem then checking every individual endnote for the lines as you’re reading the poem, flipping back between the poem and the commentary, is ridiculous, breaking your immersion in the poem, and the commentary has hardly any relation to the poem at all anyway, being about the (likely deranged) Kinbote as the former “King of Zembla” in disguised exile, which is half the joke.
The fact that there is an index referring to the events and characters of both Shade’s poem and Kinbote’s commentary (the bulk of the novel), also casts doubt on who the real compiler of the poem/commentary is. Why would Kinbote, remaining “in character,” create an index which includes characters and events of both his commentary and the poem? Why does this index also extensively detail “Kinbote, Charles, Dr.” in the third-person, and in fact has this starting line:
The italicized numerals refer to the lines in the poem and the comments therein. The capital letters G, K, S (which see) stand for the three main characters in this work.
If the three characters (Gradus, Kinbote, Shade) are being referred to in the third-person, who is this index-maker?
What about the index entry for Botkin, V. which goes:
American scholar of Russian descent, 894; king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end, 247; bottekin-maker, 71; bot, plop, and botelïy, big bellied (Russ.); botkin or bodkin, a Danish stiletto
An obvious joking reference to the “with a bare bodkin [dagger or stiletto]” of the Great Dane, Hamlet, in his famous speech on suicide. Botkin of course also being an obvious anagram of Kinbote, almost perfect apart from a missing -e, which Nabokov clearly tells you in the footnote for line 894, thus:
“Professor Pardon now spoke to me: ‘I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?’
“Kinbote: ‘You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla’ [sarcastically stressing the ‘Nova’].
“‘Didn’t you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?’ asked my dear Shade.
“‘Yes, a king’s destroyer,’ I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).”
Just addressing your point about the use of the third person in the novel's index.
I don't know why we couldn't just say that Kinbote (or Shade) was writing of himself in the third person in the index. I could more easily imagine Kinbote doing this than Shade (as I understand him).
Doesn't it turn out in Ada that Van Veen is actually the narrator and has been writing of himself in the third person?
Nixon was said to sometimes speak of himself in the third person.
Well, for one, Nabokov actually endorsed this reading.
>Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that Pale Fire "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman."
Whatever explanation you come up with for why they are referred to in the third-person as “the three main characters in this work,” they’re still awkward without assuming a fourth man seeing them from a separate vantage-point and perhaps even having created (at least some of) them. (It is possible Shade is real, but it’s also possible he’s not; at minimum, Kinbote seems the alter-ego of Botkin; but perhaps this ambiguity is precisely what Nabokov was going for.)
Also, there’s the too-obvious jokes like Kinbote not knowing exactly from what Shakespeare work Shade came up with the title “Pale Fire” from, but also just by coincidence including the exact passage in Timon of Athens it came from in a butchered retranslation back from Zemblan (having no other works of Shakespeare’s with him in his log cabin):
Lines 39-40:
“(…) One cannot help recalling a passage in Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3) where the misanthrope talks to the three marauders. Having no library in the desolate log cabin where I live like Timon in his cave, I am compelled for the purpose of quick citation to retranslate this passage into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon which, I hope, sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its spirit:
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
“For a prudent translation of Conmal’s translations of Shakespeare’s works, see note to line 962.”
Which goes:
“Line 962: Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shakespeare for something I might use for a title. And the find is ‘pale fire.’ but in which of the Bard’s works did our poet cull it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens — in Zemblan! It certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an equivalent of ‘pale fire’ (if it had, my luck would have been a statistical monster).”
The passage in question is of course
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears …
Back to the index entry for Kinbote, we read, next to each other: “…his severe criticism of quotational titles, from The Tempest, etc., such as ‘pale fire’, etc. 671; his sense of humor, 680”.
Just addressing your point about the use of the third person in the novel's index.
I don't know why we couldn't just say that Kinbote (or Shade) was writing of himself in the third person in the index. I could more easily imagine Kinbote doing this than Shade (as I understand him).
Doesn't it turn out in Ada that Van Veen is actually the narrator and has been writing of himself in the third person?
Nixon was said to sometimes speak of himself in the third person.
This coincidence of Kinbote playing dumb as to knowing where Shade’s Shakespeare allusion came from, but also just by astronomical odds having the exact work it came from in Zemblan (and no other of Shakespeare’s works with him), and in an earlier note including the exact passage the title came from because it reminds him of one of the variants of Shade’s lines, is clearly too much to be a coincidence, and suggests a meta-narrator playing games with the reader over Kinbote’s head (in this case, not just Nabokov, as he does in many of his works, but specifically Botkin, cluing you into how artificial a creation Kinbote is).
Kinbote talks about himself in the third person for half his commentary. It's not hard to believe he'd do that in the index, where the form excuses it.
Now the commentary for line 493, with “Kinbote” rambling on suicide:
“With this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one’s being, no wonder one weighs on one’s palm with a dreary smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather hardly bigger than a castle gate key or a boy’s seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an inviting abyss.
“I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare BOTKIN (note the correct spelling), and that ladies should swallow a lethal dose or drown with clumsy Ophelia. …”
[capitalization mine, everything else Nabokov’s/Kinbote’s own, exactly as it appears in the text, rounded parentheses included]
As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note. He kills himself after creating this fantastic mimicry of the dead American poet Shade, his suicided daughter Hazel, the eccentric Zemblan king Kinbote, and more besides, as a meditation on mortality and the afterlife. (Also a layered jab at Barthes’s “death of the author” theory, as Nabokov is explicitly giving the correct key to his work).
Kinbote/Botkin is hence indeed a “regicide” (as in the Zemblan language), as the “king” (Kinbote/Botkin) indeed kills himself, fulfilling the apparently strange digression on suicide by Kinbote in the notes to line 493, the death-obsession throughout the work, and the reference to the “bare bodkin/botkin” of Hamlet’s famous suicide soliloquy.
In line 347 (within the context of the fictional story), Hazel Shade, playing a Ouija-like game with a supposed poltergeist in the barn of their house, also writes down this “jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect … as a short line of simple letter-groups,” which Kinbote dutifully “transcribe[s]” for us:
“pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant last tal told”
This is roughly: “Pa* at a lane do not go to Goldsworth’s** where a tale of a foreign land told”, or, more coherently (and in Vladdie’s own explanation): “father not to go across the lane to Goldsworth's where a tale from a foreign land will be told".
*[padre, pa, papa, pada, roughly from the assumed proto-Indo-European *átta for “father”]
**[Goldsworth, the judge’s house Kinbote is renting which Shade gets shot in front of]
Hence, within the context of the story, Hazel Shade also DOES get a message from a poltergeist/floating orb warning of Shade’s upcoming death, but it doesn’t matter anyway because this is simply a blind to the deeper layer of the story, that V. Botkin created all these characters himself (perhaps as reflections of different parts of his personality) before killing himself.
Also, the israeliteels are hidden in Kobaltana.
>As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note.
Well, for one, Nabokov actually endorsed this reading.
>Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that Pale Fire "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman."
Whatever explanation you come up with for why they are referred to in the third-person as “the three main characters in this work,” they’re still awkward without assuming a fourth man seeing them from a separate vantage-point and perhaps even having created (at least some of) them. (It is possible Shade is real, but it’s also possible he’s not; at minimum, Kinbote seems the alter-ego of Botkin; but perhaps this ambiguity is precisely what Nabokov was going for.)
Also, there’s the too-obvious jokes like Kinbote not knowing exactly from what Shakespeare work Shade came up with the title “Pale Fire” from, but also just by coincidence including the exact passage in Timon of Athens it came from in a butchered retranslation back from Zemblan (having no other works of Shakespeare’s with him in his log cabin):
Lines 39-40:
“(…) One cannot help recalling a passage in Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3) where the misanthrope talks to the three marauders. Having no library in the desolate log cabin where I live like Timon in his cave, I am compelled for the purpose of quick citation to retranslate this passage into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon which, I hope, sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its spirit:
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
“For a prudent translation of Conmal’s translations of Shakespeare’s works, see note to line 962.”
Which goes:
“Line 962: Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shakespeare for something I might use for a title. And the find is ‘pale fire.’ but in which of the Bard’s works did our poet cull it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens — in Zemblan! It certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an equivalent of ‘pale fire’ (if it had, my luck would have been a statistical monster).”
The passage in question is of course
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears …
Back to the index entry for Kinbote, we read, next to each other: “…his severe criticism of quotational titles, from The Tempest, etc., such as ‘pale fire’, etc. 671; his sense of humor, 680”.
>Well, for one, Nabokov actually endorsed this reading.
Kinbote is Botkin, yes. But Nabokov never said that "the entire book and all its characters" are created by him.
He all but rejected your theory. According to Dmitri Nabokov: >Having followed with fascination the intricate discussion of who invented whom, and gleaned some intriguing peripheral details along the way, I cannot resist, with malice toward none, quoing the equine mouth. When the speculation first began many years ago, I asked my father, during a visit from Monza to Montreux, whether such theories might have any substance. He laughed a characteristic, friendly laugh and said of course not -- it would be just as implausible to say Shade and Kinbote had invented each other.
https://thenabokovian.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/NABOKV-L-0013192___body.html (cited in Brian Boyd's book, that's how I found it)
[...]
This coincidence of Kinbote playing dumb as to knowing where Shade’s Shakespeare allusion came from, but also just by astronomical odds having the exact work it came from in Zemblan (and no other of Shakespeare’s works with him), and in an earlier note including the exact passage the title came from because it reminds him of one of the variants of Shade’s lines, is clearly too much to be a coincidence, and suggests a meta-narrator playing games with the reader over Kinbote’s head (in this case, not just Nabokov, as he does in many of his works, but specifically Botkin, cluing you into how artificial a creation Kinbote is).
The poem is about astronomical coincidences. It very directly addresses that issue. I don't think it's "too much to be a coincidence"—if it were then it'd degrade the metaphysics into a parlor trick and destroy the beauty Nabokov so adored. I don't think that's the intention.
There's perhaps a resonance between the figure of the author and Shade's web of sense, but not on the crudest most literal level.
since youre one of the few anons im on the same page with as to pale fire, what do you think about the >“pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant last tal told” >father not to go across the lane to Goldsworth's where a tale from a foreign land will be told
is it a message from aunt maud warning him against going since he'll be killed by jack grey, or is it simply a statement of a fact, since he ends up not going to the house. what im confused about is, if it is a warning, then the warner must know the future and thus also knows they cant change it, right? and why isnt this ghost also trying to save hazel from her demise? is she so ugly that she will inevitably kill herself?? on the other hand if it isnt a warning why is there this attempt at communication? what's the point of telling hazel this?
I never gave it enough thought for a conclusion and it's all very vague in my mind. But I reread a few passages and came up with some remarks.
One page later Kinbote writes: >Not one hint did I find. Neither old Hentzner's specter, nor an ambushed scamp's toy flashlight, nor her own imaginative hysteria, expresses anything here that might be construed, however remotely, as containing a warning; or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-coming death.
If it's supposed to be a warning then this becomes ironic in much the same way as the Timon of Athens bit. So I lean toward a warning.
Hazel chose to die, John didn't. A warning is more obviously useful to John.
1. It's weird that it starts with "father", that sounds like it's Hazel speaking rather than Maud.
2. In the commentary to line 230 Kinbote claims that Hazel faked psychokinetic manifestations of Maud's ghost.
3. The way she receives the messages is a little reminiscent of a ouija board, and the trick behind those is that you're unconsciously composing the messages yourself.
That all vaguely suggests that the message came from Hazel herself. Lots of obvious problems with that idea but maybe there's something there if you dig further.
Boyd's book says that it's Aunt Maud's ghost "as Véra Nabokov confirms in a letter to Igor Yefimov, July 8, 1980 (VNA)". I was toying with the possibility that it was Hentzner's but I guess not.
>the warner must know the future and thus also knows they cant change it
This makes sense to me but it's not a sure thing. Could be that changing the future is possible and Maud simply failed, just as she had trouble communicating during her last year alive.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>just as she had trouble communicating during her last year alive.
good take. >Could be that changing the future is possible
normally id be okay with brushing off her ghost both knowing the future and still being able to change it or merely having vague premonitions like living psychics and being unsure as to whether or not her world is deterministic even in the afterlife, but i feel like the specific mechanics are important considering nabokovs career from pale fire onward is deeply concerned with the nature of time and ghosts. >Hazel chose to die, John didn't. A warning is more obviously useful to John.
interesting distinction. also hazel and maud were close right? so seeing as maud knows for certain that there is an afterlife, might she have had wanted hazel to join her? but then why not john? maybe she was using reverse psychology and john figured out the message during his spiritual search and walked to his death out of curiosity like the waxwing in the poem. my speculations get ridiculous but im shooting in the dark. >If it's supposed to be a warning then this becomes ironic in much the same way as the Timon of Athens bit. So I lean toward a warning.
great passage to have pointed out. i fully agree that its ironic. i think nabokov is employing the same technique where humbert was unable to decode quilty's name hidden in french in a letter and then humbert says >The letter contained an element of mysterious nastiness that I am too tired today to analyze.
which makes me think that the second part: >or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-coming death.
is also true, despite kinbotes assertion. but how? maybe hazel did figure out the message and with assurance that there was an afterlife killed herself? there is also a theory that she didnt kill herself
anyways i feel like this message (even when decoded) is relevant to a few central mysteries in the book
8 months ago
Anonymous
>i feel like the specific mechanics are important considering nabokovs career from pale fire onward is deeply concerned with the nature of time and ghosts.
Does he say things that conflict with the idea?
The only part of his explorations that I feel I have a handle on is the subjective experience of memory and the passing of time (in Ada) which I think wouldn't interfere with this. But there's much I haven't read or didn't understand. >maybe she was using reverse psychology and john figured out the message during his spiritual search and walked to his death out of curiosity like the waxwing in the poem
Don't know whether this is plausible but I really like it. >there is also a theory that she didnt kill herself
Huh, how does this work?
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Does he say things that conflict with the idea?
no its just that like i said knowing the future and not knowing that you cant change it at the same time is itself a conflicting thing to me. but like you've said maybe you can change the future and she failed, or maybe you can't change it but she didn't know. i remember a boyd essay where he was talking about nab's conception of an afterlife (from Stalking Nabokov) and it implied that once you die you're outside of time, which would explain seeing into the future but it also renders warning the living hopeless. but the idea that aunt maud purposefully warned him to kill him would make aunt maud the most important player, if you also take into account boyd's "shade influencing the commentary from the afterlife" theory. now that shade is dead, he can hide his poetic coincidences into the commentary. >Huh, how does this work?
http://www.nabokovonline.com/uploads/2/3/7/7/23779748/6._petrie_pale_fire.pdf
iirc this article claimed that aunt maud was responsible for luring hazel into death and that it wasn't suicide but accidental drowning. i suspect some connection between hazels death and aunt maude now that you've pointed out kinbote saying: >Neither old Hentzner's specter, nor an ambushed scamp's toy flashlight, nor her own imaginative hysteria, expresses anything here that might be construed, however remotely, as containing a warning; or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-coming death.
if maud somehow really did kill both john and hazel, and if john and hazel did influence the book from the afterlife (not to mention that the poem exists because of hazel's death, and the commentary exists because of john's), it would make maud the closest thing to a single author for the whole book, which i find really funny.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Tomorrow I'll give this post the time it deserves and look at the PDF but for now I'm wondering how closely the novel fits Maud's taste "for realistic objects interlaced / with grotesque growths and images of doom"
8 months ago
Anonymous
>for realistic objects interlaced / with grotesque growths and images of doom
some connections come to mind, like the commentary could be considered a grotesque growth on the poem, but at that point id be reaching
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>http://www.nabokovonline.com/uploads/2/3/7/7/23779748/6._petrie_pale_fire.pdf
I'm only halfway through but this is great. The first two pages have the exactly correct take about dual authorship and the analysis of Hazel makes a lot of sense even though I never considered this angle before. Very interesting to hold her next to John (ugly) and Sybil (willing to disregard that ugliness) and Maud (unmarried).
People on the nabokovian seem to think that Maud being "far from spinsterish" means that she was a lesbian—do you think that makes sense? Is Kinbote saying that she had an active sex life, or just that her attitude was atypical, or what?
8 months ago
Anonymous
>People on the nabokovian seem to think that Maud being "far from spinsterish" means that she was a lesbian—do you think that makes sense? Is Kinbote saying that she had an active sex life, or just that her attitude was atypical, or what?
if kinbote thought she was a lesbian, there'd be bigger evidence of it i feel like, since despite being as narcissistic as he is, he still feels some shallow kinship towards hazel just from her suicide and loneliness. at least in the index. id assume he'd feel the same for another gay character and we'd have more to go off of. maud just strikes me as someone from a shirley jackson book.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, that seems more congruent.
I really like the idea that Hazel invented the Mother Time role in the play for herself, damn. The paper didn't convince me of everything but it fits and it makes the story richer, not poorer.
The moon shining through the fog and trees does seem like a very Nabokovian detail. (If it looks like that in reality, and I'm not sure that it does.)
Now the commentary for line 493, with “Kinbote” rambling on suicide:
“With this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one’s being, no wonder one weighs on one’s palm with a dreary smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather hardly bigger than a castle gate key or a boy’s seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an inviting abyss.
“I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare BOTKIN (note the correct spelling), and that ladies should swallow a lethal dose or drown with clumsy Ophelia. …”
[capitalization mine, everything else Nabokov’s/Kinbote’s own, exactly as it appears in the text, rounded parentheses included]
As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note. He kills himself after creating this fantastic mimicry of the dead American poet Shade, his suicided daughter Hazel, the eccentric Zemblan king Kinbote, and more besides, as a meditation on mortality and the afterlife. (Also a layered jab at Barthes’s “death of the author” theory, as Nabokov is explicitly giving the correct key to his work).
Kinbote/Botkin is hence indeed a “regicide” (as in the Zemblan language), as the “king” (Kinbote/Botkin) indeed kills himself, fulfilling the apparently strange digression on suicide by Kinbote in the notes to line 493, the death-obsession throughout the work, and the reference to the “bare bodkin/botkin” of Hamlet’s famous suicide soliloquy.
In line 347 (within the context of the fictional story), Hazel Shade, playing a Ouija-like game with a supposed poltergeist in the barn of their house, also writes down this “jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect … as a short line of simple letter-groups,” which Kinbote dutifully “transcribe[s]” for us:
“pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant last tal told”
This is roughly: “Pa* at a lane do not go to Goldsworth’s** where a tale of a foreign land told”, or, more coherently (and in Vladdie’s own explanation): “father not to go across the lane to Goldsworth's where a tale from a foreign land will be told".
*[padre, pa, papa, pada, roughly from the assumed proto-Indo-European *átta for “father”]
**[Goldsworth, the judge’s house Kinbote is renting which Shade gets shot in front of]
Hence, within the context of the story, Hazel Shade also DOES get a message from a poltergeist/floating orb warning of Shade’s upcoming death, but it doesn’t matter anyway because this is simply a blind to the deeper layer of the story, that V. Botkin created all these characters himself (perhaps as reflections of different parts of his personality) before killing himself.
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i didnt do any of this when I read it, is it over for me?
Read the introduction, read the poem, read the commentary. It's not actually that complicated stop over thinking it
it actually is that complicated, you read it wrong, it's not meant to be read like a regular book
you're meant to read the poem cantos in front of you like this https://www.amazon.com.au/Pale-Fire-Poem-Cantos-Shade/dp/1584234318 so you can rearrange them and get new meaning out of them, the text is basically just a very well written puzzle to figure out.
how would rearranging them yield a solution? and what clue is there for an order? it cant be trial and error
>you're meant to read the poem cantos in front of you like this
according to who? kinbote suggests reading the commentary with the poem back and forth with two different copies but thats obviously a joke on the commentary's irrelevance. and this edition with the cards is probably just a humoring of shade and nabokov's compositional methods since they both wrote on cards.
>the text is basically just a very well written puzzle to figure out.
there are proposed solutions that explain a lot of synchronicities very well like the shades manifestations from the afterlife theory without any card rearranging.
>As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note.
does he ever say that? the only interviews ive found only said that botkin wrote the commentary and that he kills himself before the index is finished.
>(Also a layered jab at Barthes’s “death of the author” theory, as Nabokov is explicitly giving the correct key to his work).
eh. he wouldn't want a puzzle piece to be missing and then having to give it in an interview. hes just nudging us with a hint. a conscious jab at the death of the author is too tastelessly statement-like for him imo.
>but it doesn’t matter anyway because this is simply a blind to the deeper layer of the story
it does matter. even if somehow the kinbotean/botkinian theory is right and is the ultimate layer (which i dont think is the case cause at that point botkin writing the entire novel is a revelation that isnt that much more revelatory than something obvious that the reader already knows, that is, nabokov being behind the entire novel, only now its another fictional russian that killed himself? so what?) its still not a good idea to skip the ghost stuff, which reveal a story that i find much more interesting, elegant, symmetrical, thematically relevant. id bet my money on the afterlife being the ultimate layer and ive seen more evidence for it than that botkin wrote the entire novel, poem and all.
he endorsed the reading that botkin wrote the index, but im not convinced that botkin was conscious of being separate from kinbote and that the things like the timon of athens joke was his intent rather than nabokov's, or that shade and everything else was his creation rather than just nabokov's.
>For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he Professor Kinbote. He is Professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman.
Holy mother of god. Nabokov was truly a different breed
You read it straight through (foreword, poem, commentary, index). Clearly, reading the poem then checking every individual endnote for the lines as you’re reading the poem, flipping back between the poem and the commentary, is ridiculous, breaking your immersion in the poem, and the commentary has hardly any relation to the poem at all anyway, being about the (likely deranged) Kinbote as the former “King of Zembla” in disguised exile, which is half the joke.
The fact that there is an index referring to the events and characters of both Shade’s poem and Kinbote’s commentary (the bulk of the novel), also casts doubt on who the real compiler of the poem/commentary is. Why would Kinbote, remaining “in character,” create an index which includes characters and events of both his commentary and the poem? Why does this index also extensively detail “Kinbote, Charles, Dr.” in the third-person, and in fact has this starting line:
The italicized numerals refer to the lines in the poem and the comments therein. The capital letters G, K, S (which see) stand for the three main characters in this work.
If the three characters (Gradus, Kinbote, Shade) are being referred to in the third-person, who is this index-maker?
What about the index entry for Botkin, V. which goes:
American scholar of Russian descent, 894; king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end, 247; bottekin-maker, 71; bot, plop, and botelïy, big bellied (Russ.); botkin or bodkin, a Danish stiletto
An obvious joking reference to the “with a bare bodkin [dagger or stiletto]” of the Great Dane, Hamlet, in his famous speech on suicide. Botkin of course also being an obvious anagram of Kinbote, almost perfect apart from a missing -e, which Nabokov clearly tells you in the footnote for line 894, thus:
“Professor Pardon now spoke to me: ‘I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?’
“Kinbote: ‘You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla’ [sarcastically stressing the ‘Nova’].
“‘Didn’t you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?’ asked my dear Shade.
“‘Yes, a king’s destroyer,’ I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).”
Just addressing your point about the use of the third person in the novel's index.
I don't know why we couldn't just say that Kinbote (or Shade) was writing of himself in the third person in the index. I could more easily imagine Kinbote doing this than Shade (as I understand him).
Doesn't it turn out in Ada that Van Veen is actually the narrator and has been writing of himself in the third person?
Nixon was said to sometimes speak of himself in the third person.
Well, for one, Nabokov actually endorsed this reading.
>Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that Pale Fire "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman."
Whatever explanation you come up with for why they are referred to in the third-person as “the three main characters in this work,” they’re still awkward without assuming a fourth man seeing them from a separate vantage-point and perhaps even having created (at least some of) them. (It is possible Shade is real, but it’s also possible he’s not; at minimum, Kinbote seems the alter-ego of Botkin; but perhaps this ambiguity is precisely what Nabokov was going for.)
Also, there’s the too-obvious jokes like Kinbote not knowing exactly from what Shakespeare work Shade came up with the title “Pale Fire” from, but also just by coincidence including the exact passage in Timon of Athens it came from in a butchered retranslation back from Zemblan (having no other works of Shakespeare’s with him in his log cabin):
Lines 39-40:
“(…) One cannot help recalling a passage in Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3) where the misanthrope talks to the three marauders. Having no library in the desolate log cabin where I live like Timon in his cave, I am compelled for the purpose of quick citation to retranslate this passage into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon which, I hope, sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its spirit:
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
“For a prudent translation of Conmal’s translations of Shakespeare’s works, see note to line 962.”
Which goes:
“Line 962: Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shakespeare for something I might use for a title. And the find is ‘pale fire.’ but in which of the Bard’s works did our poet cull it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens — in Zemblan! It certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an equivalent of ‘pale fire’ (if it had, my luck would have been a statistical monster).”
The passage in question is of course
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears …
Back to the index entry for Kinbote, we read, next to each other: “…his severe criticism of quotational titles, from The Tempest, etc., such as ‘pale fire’, etc. 671; his sense of humor, 680”.
This coincidence of Kinbote playing dumb as to knowing where Shade’s Shakespeare allusion came from, but also just by astronomical odds having the exact work it came from in Zemblan (and no other of Shakespeare’s works with him), and in an earlier note including the exact passage the title came from because it reminds him of one of the variants of Shade’s lines, is clearly too much to be a coincidence, and suggests a meta-narrator playing games with the reader over Kinbote’s head (in this case, not just Nabokov, as he does in many of his works, but specifically Botkin, cluing you into how artificial a creation Kinbote is).
Kinbote talks about himself in the third person for half his commentary. It's not hard to believe he'd do that in the index, where the form excuses it.
>As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note.
>Well, for one, Nabokov actually endorsed this reading.
Kinbote is Botkin, yes. But Nabokov never said that "the entire book and all its characters" are created by him.
He all but rejected your theory. According to Dmitri Nabokov:
>Having followed with fascination the intricate discussion of who invented whom, and gleaned some intriguing peripheral details along the way, I cannot resist, with malice toward none, quoing the equine mouth. When the speculation first began many years ago, I asked my father, during a visit from Monza to Montreux, whether such theories might have any substance. He laughed a characteristic, friendly laugh and said of course not -- it would be just as implausible to say Shade and Kinbote had invented each other.
https://thenabokovian.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/NABOKV-L-0013192___body.html (cited in Brian Boyd's book, that's how I found it)
The poem is about astronomical coincidences. It very directly addresses that issue. I don't think it's "too much to be a coincidence"—if it were then it'd degrade the metaphysics into a parlor trick and destroy the beauty Nabokov so adored. I don't think that's the intention.
There's perhaps a resonance between the figure of the author and Shade's web of sense, but not on the crudest most literal level.
since youre one of the few anons im on the same page with as to pale fire, what do you think about the
>“pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant last tal told”
>father not to go across the lane to Goldsworth's where a tale from a foreign land will be told
is it a message from aunt maud warning him against going since he'll be killed by jack grey, or is it simply a statement of a fact, since he ends up not going to the house. what im confused about is, if it is a warning, then the warner must know the future and thus also knows they cant change it, right? and why isnt this ghost also trying to save hazel from her demise? is she so ugly that she will inevitably kill herself?? on the other hand if it isnt a warning why is there this attempt at communication? what's the point of telling hazel this?
I never gave it enough thought for a conclusion and it's all very vague in my mind. But I reread a few passages and came up with some remarks.
One page later Kinbote writes:
>Not one hint did I find. Neither old Hentzner's specter, nor an ambushed scamp's toy flashlight, nor her own imaginative hysteria, expresses anything here that might be construed, however remotely, as containing a warning; or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-coming death.
If it's supposed to be a warning then this becomes ironic in much the same way as the Timon of Athens bit. So I lean toward a warning.
Hazel chose to die, John didn't. A warning is more obviously useful to John.
1. It's weird that it starts with "father", that sounds like it's Hazel speaking rather than Maud.
2. In the commentary to line 230 Kinbote claims that Hazel faked psychokinetic manifestations of Maud's ghost.
3. The way she receives the messages is a little reminiscent of a ouija board, and the trick behind those is that you're unconsciously composing the messages yourself.
That all vaguely suggests that the message came from Hazel herself. Lots of obvious problems with that idea but maybe there's something there if you dig further.
Boyd's book says that it's Aunt Maud's ghost "as Véra Nabokov confirms in a letter to Igor Yefimov, July 8, 1980 (VNA)". I was toying with the possibility that it was Hentzner's but I guess not.
>the warner must know the future and thus also knows they cant change it
This makes sense to me but it's not a sure thing. Could be that changing the future is possible and Maud simply failed, just as she had trouble communicating during her last year alive.
>just as she had trouble communicating during her last year alive.
good take.
>Could be that changing the future is possible
normally id be okay with brushing off her ghost both knowing the future and still being able to change it or merely having vague premonitions like living psychics and being unsure as to whether or not her world is deterministic even in the afterlife, but i feel like the specific mechanics are important considering nabokovs career from pale fire onward is deeply concerned with the nature of time and ghosts.
>Hazel chose to die, John didn't. A warning is more obviously useful to John.
interesting distinction. also hazel and maud were close right? so seeing as maud knows for certain that there is an afterlife, might she have had wanted hazel to join her? but then why not john? maybe she was using reverse psychology and john figured out the message during his spiritual search and walked to his death out of curiosity like the waxwing in the poem. my speculations get ridiculous but im shooting in the dark.
>If it's supposed to be a warning then this becomes ironic in much the same way as the Timon of Athens bit. So I lean toward a warning.
great passage to have pointed out. i fully agree that its ironic. i think nabokov is employing the same technique where humbert was unable to decode quilty's name hidden in french in a letter and then humbert says
>The letter contained an element of mysterious nastiness that I am too tired today to analyze.
which makes me think that the second part:
>or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-coming death.
is also true, despite kinbotes assertion. but how? maybe hazel did figure out the message and with assurance that there was an afterlife killed herself? there is also a theory that she didnt kill herself
anyways i feel like this message (even when decoded) is relevant to a few central mysteries in the book
>i feel like the specific mechanics are important considering nabokovs career from pale fire onward is deeply concerned with the nature of time and ghosts.
Does he say things that conflict with the idea?
The only part of his explorations that I feel I have a handle on is the subjective experience of memory and the passing of time (in Ada) which I think wouldn't interfere with this. But there's much I haven't read or didn't understand.
>maybe she was using reverse psychology and john figured out the message during his spiritual search and walked to his death out of curiosity like the waxwing in the poem
Don't know whether this is plausible but I really like it.
>there is also a theory that she didnt kill herself
Huh, how does this work?
>Does he say things that conflict with the idea?
no its just that like i said knowing the future and not knowing that you cant change it at the same time is itself a conflicting thing to me. but like you've said maybe you can change the future and she failed, or maybe you can't change it but she didn't know. i remember a boyd essay where he was talking about nab's conception of an afterlife (from Stalking Nabokov) and it implied that once you die you're outside of time, which would explain seeing into the future but it also renders warning the living hopeless. but the idea that aunt maud purposefully warned him to kill him would make aunt maud the most important player, if you also take into account boyd's "shade influencing the commentary from the afterlife" theory. now that shade is dead, he can hide his poetic coincidences into the commentary.
>Huh, how does this work?
http://www.nabokovonline.com/uploads/2/3/7/7/23779748/6._petrie_pale_fire.pdf
iirc this article claimed that aunt maud was responsible for luring hazel into death and that it wasn't suicide but accidental drowning. i suspect some connection between hazels death and aunt maude now that you've pointed out kinbote saying:
>Neither old Hentzner's specter, nor an ambushed scamp's toy flashlight, nor her own imaginative hysteria, expresses anything here that might be construed, however remotely, as containing a warning; or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-coming death.
if maud somehow really did kill both john and hazel, and if john and hazel did influence the book from the afterlife (not to mention that the poem exists because of hazel's death, and the commentary exists because of john's), it would make maud the closest thing to a single author for the whole book, which i find really funny.
Tomorrow I'll give this post the time it deserves and look at the PDF but for now I'm wondering how closely the novel fits Maud's taste "for realistic objects interlaced / with grotesque growths and images of doom"
>for realistic objects interlaced / with grotesque growths and images of doom
some connections come to mind, like the commentary could be considered a grotesque growth on the poem, but at that point id be reaching
Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch.
>http://www.nabokovonline.com/uploads/2/3/7/7/23779748/6._petrie_pale_fire.pdf
I'm only halfway through but this is great. The first two pages have the exactly correct take about dual authorship and the analysis of Hazel makes a lot of sense even though I never considered this angle before. Very interesting to hold her next to John (ugly) and Sybil (willing to disregard that ugliness) and Maud (unmarried).
People on the nabokovian seem to think that Maud being "far from spinsterish" means that she was a lesbian—do you think that makes sense? Is Kinbote saying that she had an active sex life, or just that her attitude was atypical, or what?
>People on the nabokovian seem to think that Maud being "far from spinsterish" means that she was a lesbian—do you think that makes sense? Is Kinbote saying that she had an active sex life, or just that her attitude was atypical, or what?
if kinbote thought she was a lesbian, there'd be bigger evidence of it i feel like, since despite being as narcissistic as he is, he still feels some shallow kinship towards hazel just from her suicide and loneliness. at least in the index. id assume he'd feel the same for another gay character and we'd have more to go off of. maud just strikes me as someone from a shirley jackson book.
Yeah, that seems more congruent.
I really like the idea that Hazel invented the Mother Time role in the play for herself, damn. The paper didn't convince me of everything but it fits and it makes the story richer, not poorer.
The moon shining through the fog and trees does seem like a very Nabokovian detail. (If it looks like that in reality, and I'm not sure that it does.)
Now the commentary for line 493, with “Kinbote” rambling on suicide:
“With this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one’s being, no wonder one weighs on one’s palm with a dreary smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather hardly bigger than a castle gate key or a boy’s seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an inviting abyss.
“I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare BOTKIN (note the correct spelling), and that ladies should swallow a lethal dose or drown with clumsy Ophelia. …”
[capitalization mine, everything else Nabokov’s/Kinbote’s own, exactly as it appears in the text, rounded parentheses included]
As Nabokov graciously tells you in an interview, the entire book and all its characters are created by the eccentric Russian emigré V. Botkin as an elaborate suicide note. He kills himself after creating this fantastic mimicry of the dead American poet Shade, his suicided daughter Hazel, the eccentric Zemblan king Kinbote, and more besides, as a meditation on mortality and the afterlife. (Also a layered jab at Barthes’s “death of the author” theory, as Nabokov is explicitly giving the correct key to his work).
Kinbote/Botkin is hence indeed a “regicide” (as in the Zemblan language), as the “king” (Kinbote/Botkin) indeed kills himself, fulfilling the apparently strange digression on suicide by Kinbote in the notes to line 493, the death-obsession throughout the work, and the reference to the “bare bodkin/botkin” of Hamlet’s famous suicide soliloquy.
In line 347 (within the context of the fictional story), Hazel Shade, playing a Ouija-like game with a supposed poltergeist in the barn of their house, also writes down this “jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect … as a short line of simple letter-groups,” which Kinbote dutifully “transcribe[s]” for us:
“pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant last tal told”
This is roughly: “Pa* at a lane do not go to Goldsworth’s** where a tale of a foreign land told”, or, more coherently (and in Vladdie’s own explanation): “father not to go across the lane to Goldsworth's where a tale from a foreign land will be told".
*[padre, pa, papa, pada, roughly from the assumed proto-Indo-European *átta for “father”]
**[Goldsworth, the judge’s house Kinbote is renting which Shade gets shot in front of]
Hence, within the context of the story, Hazel Shade also DOES get a message from a poltergeist/floating orb warning of Shade’s upcoming death, but it doesn’t matter anyway because this is simply a blind to the deeper layer of the story, that V. Botkin created all these characters himself (perhaps as reflections of different parts of his personality) before killing himself.
Also, the israeliteels are hidden in Kobaltana.
it's just words on a page bro
1. read pale fire
2. read pale townie by tom will
cover to cover
>How to read Pale Fire?
Just read it and have fun. 🙂
I liked the poem. Is it worth springing for the annotated edition?
The same way you eat a Reese's