Pale Fire

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Pale Fire  
Image:Nabokov palefire.jpg
First US edition of Pale Fire
Author Vladimir Nabokov
Country United States
Language English
Publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date 1962 (corrected edition first published by Vintage International, 1989)
Pages 315
ISBN ISBN 0-679-72342-0 (Vintage)

Pale Fire (1962) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a poem titled "Pale Fire" by John Shade, a fictional author, with an introduction and commentary by a fictional friend of his. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are central characters.

The novel's unusual structure has attracted much attention, and it is often cited as an important example of metafiction.[citation needed] Pale Fire has spawned a wide variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticism. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel".[1]

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Starting with the table of contents, Pale Fire is presented as the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by a famous American poet, John Shade. The poem digressively describes many aspects of Shade's life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel. Canto 3 focuses on Shade's search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a "faint hope" in higher powers "playing a game of worlds" as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers many personal details on Shade's daily life and creative process, as well as some thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe.

The poem appears with a Foreword, extensive Commentary, and Index by Shade's self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote, Shade's neighbor in the small college town of New Wye. According to Kinbote, Shade has been murdered. Kinbote has acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem's publication, telling readers that it lacks only one line.

Kinbote's Commentary takes the form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem. Here and in the rest of his critical apparatus, Kinbote explicates the poem surprisingly little. Focusing instead on his own concerns, he divulges pieces of what proves to be the plot, some of which can be connected by following the many cross-references. Thus the narration is highly nonlinear. (In 1969, the information-technology researcher Ted Nelson obtained permission from the novel's publishers to use it for a hypertext demonstration at Brown University. [2]) Kinbote tells his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. He also tells the story of Charles Xavier Vseslav, also known as Charles II, "The Beloved," the deposed king of the "distant northern land" of Zembla who picturesquely escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries. Kinbote repeatedly claims that he inspired the poem by recounting Charles's escape to Shade and that possible allusions to Charles, and to Zembla, can be detected in Shade's poem and especially in rejected drafts. However, no comprehensible reference to Charles is to be found in the poem. A third story told by Kinbote is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake.

The reader soon realizes that Kinbote himself is Charles Xavier, living incognito—or, though Kinbote builds an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language, that he is insane and that his identification with Charles is a delusion, as perhaps all of Zembla is.

Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book.[3] The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don't have to pay attention to it,"[4] but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote's suicide.[5] One of Kinbote's annotations to Shade's poem (corresponding to line 493) addresses the subject of suicide in some detail.

[edit] Explanation of the title

As Nabokov pointed out himself,[6] the title of John Shade's poem is from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens: "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a metaphor about creativity and inspiration. Kinbote quotes the passage but does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate Zemblan translation of the play, and in a separate note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as titles.

Some interpreters have noted a secondary reference in the book's title to Hamlet, where the Ghost remarks how the glow-worm "'gins to pale his uneffectual fire" (Act I, scene 5).[7] The duality of the Shakespearean reference reflects the nature of this puzzle-novel; an easy and rewarding reading of the novel masks a more obscure, and therefore more rewarding, second solution.

The title is first mentioned in the foreword:

"I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator..."

[edit] Initial reception

The editor of a book of Nabokov criticism states that Pale Fire excited as diverse criticism as any of Nabokov's novels.[8] Mary McCarthy's review[9] was extremely laudatory; the Vintage edition excerpts it on the front cover.[10] She tried to explicate hidden references and connections. Dwight Macdonald responded by saying the book was "unreadable" and both it and McCarthy's review were as pedantic as Kinbote.[11] Anthony Burgess, like McCarthy, extolled the book,[12] while Alfred Chester condemned it as "a total wreck".[13]

Some other early reviews were less decided, praising the book's satire and comedy but noting its difficulty and finding its subject slight[14][15] or saying that its artistry offers "only a kibitzer's pleasure".[16] MacDonald called the reviews he had seen, other than McCarthy's, "cautiously unfavorable".[11]

In the 1980s, after Nabokov's reputation was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union, the novel was translated into Russian by his wife Véra, its dedicatee.[17]

[edit] Interpretations

Some readers concentrate on the apparent story, focusing on traditional aspects of fiction such as the relationship among the characters.[18][19] They may make a case that Kinbote is parasitic on Shade, or that Shade's poem is mediocre and Kinbote, the inventor of Zembla, is a true genius.[citation needed] In 1997, Brian Boyd published a much-discussed study[20] arguing that the ghost of John Shade influenced Kinbote's contributions. He later expanded this essay into a book, in which he also argues that, in order to trigger Shade's poem, Hazel's ghost induced Kinbote to recount his Zemblan delusions to Shade.[5]

Other readers see a story quite different from the apparent narrative. "Shadeans" maintain that John Shade wrote not only the poem, but the commentary as well, having invented his own death and the character of Kinbote as a literary device. According to Boyd,[20] Andrew Field invented the Shadean theory[21] and Julia Bader expanded it;[22] Boyd himself espoused the theory for a time.[23] "Kinboteans", a decidedly smaller group, believe that Kinbote invented the existence of John Shade. Boyd[20] credits the Kinbotean theory to Page Stegner[24] and adds that most of its adherents are newcomers to the book. Some readers see the book as oscillating undecidably between these alternatives, like the Rubin vase (a drawing that may be two profiles or a goblet).[25][26][27]

Though a minority of commentators believe or at least accept the possibility that Zembla is as "real" as New Wye,[28] most assume that Zembla, or at least the operetta-quaint and homosexually gratified palace life enjoyed by Charles Xavier before he is overthrown, is imaginary in the context of the story. The name "Zembla" (taken from "Nova Zembla", a former anglicization of Novaya Zemlya) may evoke popular fantasy literature about royalty such as The Prisoner of Zenda,[16][29] signaling that it is not to be taken literally.[citation needed] As in other of Nabokov's books, however, the fiction is an exaggerated or comically distorted version of his own life[citation needed] as a son of privilege before the Russian Revolution and an exile afterwards,[30] and the central murder has resemblances (emphasized by Priscilla Meyer[31]) to Nabokov's father's murder by an assassin who was trying to kill someone else.

Some readers, starting with Mary McCarthy[9] and including Boyd, Nabokov's annotator Alfred Appel,[32] and D. Barton Johnson,[33] see Charles Kinbote as an alter-ego of the insane Professor V. Botkin, to whose delusions John Shade and the rest of the faculty of Wordsmith College generally condescend. 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."[6] The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references leads readers to this "plum". The Index, supposedly created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring back to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such individual is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, the "Gradus" who kills Shade is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting. Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade, who resembled Goldsworth.

Still other readers de-emphasize any sort of "real story" and may doubt the existence of such a thing. In the interplay of allusions and thematic links, they find a multifaceted image of English literature,[31] criticism,[25] literary idolatry,[34] politics,[34] or some other topic.

[edit] Allusions and references

Like many of Nabokov's books, Pale Fire alludes to others. "Hurricane Lolita" is mentioned, and Pnin appears as a minor character. There are many resemblances to "Ultima Thule" and "Solus Rex",[35] two short stories by Nabokov, which were to have been the first two chapters of a novel in Russian that he never continued. The placename Thule appears in Pale Fire, as does the phrase solus rex (a chess problem in which Black has no pieces but the king).

The book is also full of references to culture, nature, and literature. Some have been greatly emphasized by critics; others may be trifles. Many[who?] feel the book is more enjoyable if the reader deciphers or pursues these references independently.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Boyd, Brian (2002). "Nabokov: A Centennial Toast". in Jane Grayson, Arnold McMillin, and Priscilla Meyer (eds.). Nabokov's World. Volume 2: Reading Nabokov. Palgrave. pp. 11. ISBN 0-333-96417-9. 
  2. ^ Wolf, Gary: The Curse of Xanadu Wired 3.06, June 1995
  3. ^ Nabokov, Vladimir (1973). Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 74. ISBN 0-679-72609-8 (Vintage reissue, 1990). 
  4. ^ Wood, Michael (1994). The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton University Press. p. 186. ISBN 0-691-00632-6. 
  5. ^ a b c Boyd, Brian (2001). Nabokov's "Pale Fire": The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08957-4. http://books.google.com/books?visbn=0691089574&id=3Tj05mucFQEC&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=Pale+Fire+magic+artistic+discovery&sig=9iypalugmBTXO4FwC9U9GUoGSiE. 
  6. ^ a b Dolbier, Maurice (June 17, 1962). "Books and Authors: Nabokov's Plums". The New York Herald Tribune: p. 5. 
  7. ^ Grabes, Herbert (1995). "Nabokov and Shakespeare: The English Works". in Vladimir Alexandrov (ed.). The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. Garland Publishing, Inc. pp. 509–510. ISBN 0-8153-0354-8.  See also references therein.
  8. ^ Page, Norman (ed.) (1982). Vladimir Nabokov: The Critical Heritage (1997 ed.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 29. ISBN 0415159164. http://books.google.com/books?id=vJgLVmOe1sIC. Retrieved on 2008-01-19. 
  9. ^ a b McCarthy, Mary (June 4, 1962). "A Bolt from the Blue". The New Republic.  Revised version in Mary McCarthy (2002). A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays. New York: The New York Review of Books. pp. 83–102. ISBN 1-59017-010-5. 
  10. ^ The quotation is "a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness… one of the very great works of art of this century".
  11. ^ a b Macdonald, Dwight (Summer 1962). "Virtuosity Rewarded, or Dr. Kinbote's Revenge". Partisan Review: 437–442.  Partially reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, pp. 137–140
  12. ^ Burgess, Anthony (November 15, 1962). "Nabokov Masquerade". Yorkshire Post.  Partially reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, p. 143.
  13. ^ Chester, Alfred (November, 1962). "Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov". Commentary.  Reprinted in Chester, Alfred (1992). Looking for Genet: Literary Essays and Reviews. Black Sparrow Press. ISBN 0876858728.  Quoted by Page, Critical Heritage, p. 29.
  14. ^ Steiner, George (July 7, 1962). "Review of Pale Fire". Reporter: 42, 44–45.  Partially reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, p. 140.
  15. ^ Dennis, Nigel (November 11, 1962). "It's Hard to Name This Butterfly!". Sunday Telegraph. pp. p. 6.  Reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, pp. 142–143.
  16. ^ a b Kermode, Frank (November 9, 1962). "Zemblances". New Statesman: 671–672.  Reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, pp. 144–148
  17. ^ Boyd, Brian (1991). Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 662. 
  18. ^ Alter, Robert (1993). "Autobiography as Alchemy in Pale Fire". Cycnos 10: 135–41. 
  19. ^ Pifer, Ellen (1980). Nabokov and the Novel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 110–118. 
  20. ^ a b c Boyd, Brian (1997). "Shade and Shape in Pale Fire". Nabokov Studies 4. http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boydpf1.htm. Retrieved on 2006-09-26. 
  21. ^ Field, Andrew (1967). Nabokov: His Life in Art. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 291–332. 
  22. ^ Bader, Julia (1972). Crystal Land: Artifice in Nabokov's English Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 31–56. 
  23. ^ Boyd, Brian (1991). Vladimir Nabokov: the American Years. Princeton University Press. pp. 425–456. ISBN 0-691-06797-X. http://books.google.com/books?visbn=0691024715&id=C8lF4iqAgRQC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP14&dq=Brian+Boyd+American+Years&sig=oZZww1rhnR1-m7ITldfN7gP7BM4. Retrieved on 2006-09-25. 
  24. ^ Stegner, Page (1966). Escape into Aesthetics. New York: Dial. 
  25. ^ a b Kernan, Alvin B. (1982). The Imaginary Library: An Essay on Literature and Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.  Reprinted as "Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in Pale Fire" in Bloom, Harold (ed.) (1987). Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Chelsea House. pp. 101–126. ISBN 1-55546-279-0. 
  26. ^ McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-415-04513-4. 
  27. ^ See also the archives of NABOKV-L for December 1997 and January 1998. That mailing list contains many discussions of Pale Fire.
  28. ^ Tammi, Pekka (1995). "Pale Fire". in Vladimir E. Alexandrov (ed.). The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. Garland Publishing. pp. 571–585. ISBN 0815303548. 
  29. ^ Hornick, Neil; Boyd, Brian (March 10, 2005). "Pale Fire and The Prisoner of Zenda". http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/hornboyd.htm. Retrieved on 2008-01-19.  An exchange from NABOKV-L.
  30. ^ Nabokov, Speak, Memory
  31. ^ a b c Meyer, Priscilla (1989). Find What the Sailor Has Hidden: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5206-2. 
  32. ^ Appel, Alfred Jr. (ed.) (1991). The Annotated Lolita. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9.  Appel's annotations to Lolita also address Pale Fire, and "in place of a note on the text", Appel reproduces the last two paragraphs of Kinbote's foreword, which discuss poetry and commentary.
  33. ^ Johnson, D. Barton (1985). Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis. ISBN 0-88233-908-7. 
  34. ^ a b Vintage edition of Pale Fire, rear cover copy, 1989
  35. ^ Boyd (1999) reviews the resemblances.
  36. ^ a b c de Vries, Gerard (1991). "Fanning the Poet's Fire: Some Remarks on Nabokov's Pale Fire". Russian Literature Triquarterly 24: 239–267. 
  37. ^ a b c d Boyd, Brian (1996). "Notes". in Vladimir Nabokov; Brian Boyd, ed. Nabokov: Novels 1955–1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire. Library of America. ISBN 1883011191. 
  38. ^ Appel, Alfred, Jr. (1974). Nabokov's Dark Cinema. Oxford University Press. pp. 30. ISBN 0195018346. 
  39. ^ Donahue, Michael (2004-10-31). "Chapman's Homer: Definitive Statement". Post to NABOKV-L. http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410&L=NABOKV-L&P=R43338&I=-3. 
  40. ^ a b Roth, Matthew (2007). "Three Allusions in Pale Fire". The Nabokovian 58: 53–60. 
  41. ^ Dolinin, Alexander (1995-12-12). "Re: Library of America queries (fwd)". Post to NABOKV-L. http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9512&L=nabokv-l&P=1103. Retrieved on 2008-09-28. 
  42. ^ Sisson, Jonathan B. (1995). "Nabokov and some Turn-of-the-Century English Writers". in Vladimir E. Alexandrov (ed.). The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. Garland Publishing. pp. 530. ISBN 0815303548. 
  43. ^ McDiarmid, Angus (1815). Striking and picturesque delineations of the grand, beautiful, wonderful, and interesting scenery around Loch-Earn. John Moir. http://books.google.com/books?id=2MUHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=barbarous+%22incoherent+transactions%22. Retrieved on 2008-09-28. 

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Works by Vladimir Nabokov
Novels
Russian
English
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stories
Russian

"The Wood-Sprite" · "Russian Spoken Here" · "Sounds" · "Wingstroke" · "Gods" · "A Matter of Chance" · "The Seaport" · "Revenge" · "Beneficence" · "Details of a Sunset" · "The Thunderstorm" · "La Veneziana" · "Bachmann" · "The Dragon" · "Christmas" · "A Letter That Never Reached Russia" · "The Fight" · "The Return of Chorb" · "A Guide to Berlin" · "A Nursery Tale" · "Terror" · "Razor" · "The Passenger" · "The Doorbell" · "An Affair of Honor" · "The Christmas Story" · "The Potato Elf" · "The Aurelian" · "A Dashing Fellow" · "A Bad Day" · "The Visit to the Museum" · "A Busy Man" · "Terra Incognita" · "The Reunion" · "Lips to Lips" · "Orache" · "Music" · "Perfection" · "The Admiralty Spire" · "The Leonardo" · "In Memory of L. I. Shigaev" · "The Circle" · "A Russian Beauty" · "Breaking the News" · "Torpid Smoke" · "Recruiting" · "A Slice of Life" · "Spring in Fialta" · "Cloud, Castle, Lake" · "Tyrants Destroyed" · "Lik" · "Vasiliy Shishkov" · "Ultima Thule" · "Solus Rex" · "The Word" · "Natasha"
French
English

"The Assistant Producer" · "That in Aleppo Once..." · "A Forgotten Poet" · "Time and Ebb" · "Conversation Piece, 1945" · "Signs and Symbols" · "First Love" · "Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster" · "The Vane Sisters" · "Lance" · "Easter Rain"
Plays
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Death · The Grandfather · The North Pole · The Tragedy of Mr. Morn · The Man from the USSR · The Event · The Waltz Invention
Non-fiction
Memoirs & Letters

Speak, Memory · The Nabokov-Wilson letters · Selected Letters, 1940-1977
Criticism

Strong Opinions · Nikolai Gogol · Lectures on Literature · Lectures on Russian Literature · Lectures on Don Quixote · Notes on Prosody
Miscellanea
 

Poems and Problems · Lolita: A Screenplay · The Annotated Lolita · Carrousel · Eugene Onegin (translation) · Father's Butterflies
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