There is brilliance in madness.

I have never quite read a book like this one. It was a bit difficult to follow and stay interested in (as evidenced in the fact that it is only 300 pages but took me about 9 months to read. But, at the same time, I enjoyed it, its themes, and its symbolism quite a lot. I think this is one that can benefit from doing some side research and interpretation while you are reading it.

The book is written as if it is a true story and the author (Charles Kinbote) is a biographer for the main character (John Shade) and is interpreting his poem, that takes up a few dozen pages, with a couple hundred pages of footnotes (which is where the main story lies). At times Charles is very frank and sincere, at other times he is borderline unhinged. While it is all fiction, it was interesting to try to extrapolate the truth from the exaggerations in the story.

If you try this one, go in knowing that it is likely unlike anything you have ever read before. Embrace the differences. Then, when confusion sets in, take a break and have a nice cup of tea – it will be waiting for you when you return!

n  "Ero l’ombra del beccofrusone ucciso
dall’azzurro ingannevole nel pannello del vetro;
ero la macchia di cinerea lanugine – e
ancora vivevo, volavo nel cielo riflesso."n

Un poema in 999+1 versi che è magnifico di per sè. Il prof. Shade (Botkin/Kinbote? Nabokov?) ci fa entrare, e lo seguiamo con un pizzico di struggimento, nella sua vita, dall'infanzia con genitori e zia Maud, all'amore per Sybil ("E anche tu sei presente, amore mio, tu sempre,  immancabilmente, sotto le parole, sopra le sillabe, a esaltare il ritmo della vita.") e per l'adorata figlia Hazel, e ci fa partecipi delle sue visioni sulla morte, la religione, il dopo vita, il senso della vita.

Il poema è accompagnato da una prefazione, un commentario ed un indice analitico. E' composto in "contrappunto", dal prof. Kimbote (o Botkin? o Nabokov?). Che svia completamente e scrive il suo romanzo. Improbabile re di Zembla, amato dal suo popolo (forse), avventurosamente fuggito negli Stati Uniti dopo un colpo di stato supportato dai russi, che tenteranno di farlo fuori. Strampalato, gay con tendenze pedofile, egocentrico, isolato, sicuramente non amato dai suoi nuovi concittadini.

Ci sono fuochi pallidi alimentati da luce riflessa, dal calore del sole. Ma forse è tutto un gioco di specchi e riflessi o di messaggi scarabocchiati al buio. O forse c'è un disegno del tutto.

"Ma d’un tratto intuii che era questo
l’essenziale, il tema in contrappunto;
solo questo: non il testo, ma la sua tessitura;
non il sogno, ma la coincidenza capovolta,
non il vano nonsenso, ma una rete di senso.
Sì! Mi bastava poter trovare nella vita
un qualche nesso o pseudonesso, una sorta
di correlato disegno dentro al gioco,
un plesso di artistica maestria, e qualcosa del piacere
già provato da coloro che vi avevano giocato."

What have I just read here?

An experimental tour de force, a wonderfully funny and erudite novel, a gleeful revelling in the perversity of explanatory supplemental notes and commentary that explain nothing and merely layer on confusion, misunderstanding and obscurity, a masterful coloratura solo of comic critical voice, a kind of controlled demolition of high intellectual style, a sustained demonstration of the layered subtleties of dramatic irony in action in the relentless damning with faint praise and inadvertent skewering of an overlong, middlebrow poem, a surprisingly readable narrative scattered across a crude hypertext apparatus of cross references, and an absolute delight to reread.

Well, how lucky to start another year with a rare 5-star rating. I'm dying to write some sort of review for this, but it won't be coming any time soon. The prose (and the poem) was delightful, and it's expanded my notions of what can be achieved in literature.

I've been reluctant towards poetry in general, never having picked up a book focusing on the spouse of prose, but reading Pale Fire has ignited my interest in the world. If any of you who reads this can suggest where would be some good places to start with reading poetry in English (I think I'll know where to start with the Japanese), that would be greatly appreciated.

January 15, 2016

Edit: I used some lines from the poem in Pale Fire in another review here.

My 3rd Nabokov and this sustains my belief that he was really one of the great storytellers that ever walked on earth.

This postmodern novel is an example of meta-fiction. Because of this, it is a difficult read. I had to slow down and oftentimes went back at the start of the paragraph only to understand, even how shallow, what Nabokov is saying. In the end, however, finishing this book especially because I tried to really understand it, gave me a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment. Nobody can argue about Nabokov's gift as storyteller so every time anyone finishes a book by him, one gets a bragging right. His books may be hard to understand but you gain so much that you feel like a different person, a more matured reader to be specific.

I don't know about you, but for me, this book is one-of-its-kind. Who would have thought of having 2 personas to tell a story in different formats? John Shade wrote a 999-line poem entitled Pale Fire and when he dies, his friend Dr. Charles Kinbote manages its publication and puts his annotations on it. Then the annotations end up telling his own story springing out from the times he shared with his friend, and his family - wife Sybil and daughter Hazel who committed suicide and the story is told in the second canto (the poem is divided into 4 cantos).

The poem is excellent and it has quite a number of brilliant quotable lines. My favorite part is these lines addressed to his wife of 40 years, Sybil:

n  We have been married forty years. At least
Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
By our two heads. Four hundred thousand times
The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimes
Has marked our common hour. How many more
Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?

I love you when you're standing on the lawn
Peering at something in a tree: "It's gone.
It was so small. It might come back" (all this
Voice in a whisper softer than a kiss).
I love you when you call me to admire
A jet's pink trail above the sunset fire.
I love you when you're humming as you pack
A suitcase or the farcical car sack
With round-trip zipper. And I love you most
When with a pensive nod you greet her ghost
And hold her first toy on your palm, or look
At a postcard from her, found in a book.n

Aside from the obviously telling what he feels about loving his wife of 40 years, John Shade (Nabokov) made references to his daughter who committed suicide in the last two lines and I could not help but feel the pain being a father myself. It is amazing how he feels that love for his wife and at the same time connect her to the pain of losing and missing a child.

This book is a work of art - both in the story and structure. It is as if Nabokov wanted to prove that he was not only great in prose but more importantly excellent in poetry. I wonder who among the contemporary novelists can pull this trick together. I may not know a lot of YA authors but I guess Nabokov is Nabokov and there is nobody like him.

Don't pass up on this book. It is not an easy read but if you want a rewarding read, go try this one. It's a strangely beautiful, beautiful book.

The questions of authorship, unreliability, etc., that would naturally occur to any reader of Pale Fire (whether there was ever supposed to have been a Shade or a Kinbote at all, and if so, whether Shade was an invention of Kinbote, or Botkin or Kinbote-kin of Shade; whether a king, mad or not, ever found his exiled way to New Wye (Y) Appalachia from that distant Zembla; whether other, less physical Shade or Shades were imparting symbols from a death-distanced beyond onto a Botkin-bote vessel; whether it was all a lunatic émigré’s fever-fantasy that happened to culminate in the execution by another lunatic of an unfortunate university-bound, gray-haired, venerable poet in the mistaken bullet’s path, etc. [the theories abound and are fascinating, and I won’t give spoilers here, but I’m fairly certain in my reading of the book, and what was “supposed” to have taken place on our Terra the fair]) are really secondary to the pure enjoyment, pure entertainment, highest-level art and fun that this book is. Getting back to Nabokov after a break is like dipping in the summer ocean after years of tepid baths. He is the master. This book is perfection. Supremely balanced, brilliant, hilarious, complexly-woven, with prose and poetry beyond compare, perfection.

This is the book that let me see that 'post-modern' fiction can be fun and rewarding at the same time that it is challenging and subversive; it doesn't all have to be literary wanking. The story unfolds in the guise of a collection of poems by character John Shade with an accompanying commentary by stalker-fan Charles Kinbote.

As we read through the poems, and especially Kinbote's commentary (which is more about himself and his own delusional pre-occupations than the poems it professes to expound upon), we begin to see the outlines of a harrowing story of fannish self-absorption and tragic genius. Nabokov's unreliable narrator is once again present and we must carefully sift through everything told to us in an attempt to discover what really happened to John Shade, just who is Charles Kinbote, and what, if any, meaning resides in the poetry of 'Pale Fire'?

An excellent and challenging read that ranks among Nabokov's best.

Pálido fuego es una novela extraordinaria, escapa de lo común que estoy acostumbrado a leer.

Es hipertextual; se deben vincular las distintas partes del texto para interpretarlo, o para perderse más.

Es metaficción; comienza con un prólogo, continua con un poema escrito por John Shade que contiene 999 versos, sigue con comentarios de los versos a cargo del enigmático Charles Kimbote y finaliza con un index. Todos estos textos son artificios literarios de gran calidad que nos muestran como el arte crea otra realidad que puede ser o no verdad.

Es que Pálido Fuego desafía las nociones tradicionales de la estructura narrativa clásica y profundiza en la distinción entre percepción y realidad. El poema de Shade (sombra) abre y cierra con los famosos versos:

“Yo era la sombra del picotero asesinado por el
falaz azur de la ventana”

El reflejo es el engaño, algo que promete y no cumple su cometido. Los reflejos imitan, comprometen nuestra percepción. Así me sentí leyendo esta obra.

Una review que analice todo lo que contiene esta inteligente obra es imposible. Léanla y disfruten.

Comencé la lectura en Kindle y me di cuenta de que por temas prácticos es necesario el libro físico. Acá en Montevideo está descatalogado, y logré obtener un ejemplar luego de trece intentos en librerías de viejo (usados). Mi versión de Ed. Sudamericana del año 1974 tiene hojas de color marrón, la contratapa se despegó de primera. Al empezar la aventura se abrió por la mitad y el lomo se hizo añicos. Con cariño lo forré. Lo leí maniobrando para que no se desarmara. Ahí está en mi biblioteca, vivo aún.

I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into a monstrous semblance of a novel.

Giving star ratings to books is, as I'm sure you've already noticed, a tricky business. Sometimes, I even find myself wishing for a more nuanced rating system—perhaps with multiple categories, with stars ranging from 0 to 10. Yet I think such a system would quickly grow tiresome. The best solution is to give a book a star rating and press on; the review is the meat, the star-rating the garnish. But I preface this review with this digression because I wish to explain why I'm not giving such an obviously brilliant work five stars. When I can, I prefer rating books by comparing them with other books by the same author; this give me a reasonable baseline. So, because Nabokov unfortunately reached such dazzling heights in Lolita (in my opinion, at least), this work gets a demotion. Sorry, my dear Vlad; you're too good for your own good.

While reviewing this book, it is extremely difficult to resist lapsing into parody; this book practically begs the reviewer to take part in the fun. But since I don't think I could do it justice, and since Manny (among others) has already done such a fine job of parodying it, I will let that be, and attempt an old-fashioned, earnest, non-meta, straightforward review. Wish me luck.

Aside from the sheer joy of taking part in Nabokov's literary game, another thing that makes parody so tempting is that this book is so damned deep. A parody is a kind of defense mechanism, allowing one to demonstrate one's knowledge of the work without falling into the black hole of interpretation. This book can be read a dozen times and still fascinate; in every line, in every cross-reference, in every stanza, some little joke, some new interpretation, some added twist to the labyrinth lurks languidly, luring us on. Thus, I'm confident that, with my measly first reading, I barely managed to scratch the surface; yet what a lovely surface!

While Lolita shows Nabokov as a consummate artist, Pale Fire shows him as a consummate craftsman. This is a work of supreme artistry, of nearly breathtaking skill, and—dare I use that tired expression?—a tour de force. Let me use a few more clichés: it is a virtuoso performance, a triumph, a masterpiece. Really, no heap of superlatives will reach high enough to allow us to see the top of this mountain.

The poem itself, which could easily have been a throwaway little ditty in less capable hands, is very fine; in fact, the poem is almost too fine. By the end, the reader has experienced a piece strong enough to stand on its own; one almost doesn't wish Nabokov to spoil the aesthetic with some elaborate literary ruse. The poem, please—that's all we need.

Here is just one sample from the many wonderful lines:

Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,
A singing in the ears. In this hive I'm
Locked up. Yet, if prior to life we had
Been able to imagine life, what mad,
Impossible, unutterably weird,
Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared.

(One wonders if perhaps Nabokov missed his true calling. Well, on second thought, never mind.)

The meta-fiction has to be awfully good to compete with the poem for attention; otherwise, Nabokov just wrote a nice poem with an appended joke. And, indeed, the commentary does often take the form of a joke. Kinbote is hilariously hapless, delightfully deranged, and uproariously obtuse. (Yes, not a very elegant string of alliterations, I'll grant; but can't I have just a little fun?) While Nabokov's descriptions of sexual lust are disturbing with Humbert, they are farcical with Kinbote; I smiled often at the many descriptions of homosexual delight among the swarms of page-boys in the palace of Zembla. Also endearing are Kinbote's attempts to read his own past into Shade's poem; so desperate and so dimwitted is the attempt, that it's hard not to chuckle.

I am very hesitant to read a moral into the story, as Nabokov was anything but a moralist. Nevertheless, I can't resist seeing the whole novel as one gigantic commentary on commentary itself: a testament to the act of criticism, in which the reader reads himself into the story, and then rewrites the story via interpretation to fit. Reader's are like the moon, shining with borrowed light: "the moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Nabokov's source for the title, from Timon of Athens). Kinbote does comically what we all do unconsciously when we read a work of fiction: searches for the elements, the specific passages, the certain themes that resonate with him, and disregards the rest. While confirmation bias is the bane of science, it is the basis of literature: we find our own preconceptions, priorities, and personalities when we read.

This is a tempting interpretation; still, the sensitive reader of this work will not be satisfied. For there seems to be more going on under the surface than first appears. Is Zembla a real place? with a real king? Are we to believe these tales of the palace, with its page boys and inept revolutionaries? Are we to take seriously this absurd escape story? And could there be, even in a work of fiction, a man so learned and yet so dull as Kinbote? (Well, I'm not so skeptical about this last question.) In short, the comic character of Kinbote quickly makes one suspect that he himself is a ruse, a persona; that this backstory of escapes and love affairs is fantastical, and that we are not to trust a word written by the man.

But then, who is he? Is he a professor with a split personality (Botkin, or Botkine, as the text darkly hints)? Or is he Shade himself, indulging in literary gag? Or is Shade the one who is fictional, and the poem invented by Kinbote to taunt his Zemblan nemeses? But if Shade or Kinbote isn't real, who is this "Gradus"? An escaped psychotic named Jack Grey (as the text also hints), bent on killing Judge Goldsworth?—the judge whose house "Kinbote" is renting, and who was responsible for Grey's incarceration. Then was Shade killed—if he was, in fact, killed—because he resembled Goldsworth? Is Zembla really just Novaya Zemlya?—also called "Nova Zembla," where, it so happens, there is a river named "Nabokov's River," named in honor of a family member of Vlad's who discovered it. And what's with the frequent allusions to the afterlife? to suicide? What, in short, is really going on here?

All this ambiguity reminds me of a certain passage from Nabokov's memoir, Speak, Memory. Here, he is describing his goal when composing chess problems:

It should be understood that competition in chess problems is not really between White and Black but between the composer and the hypothetical solver (just as in a first-rate work of fiction the real clash is not between the characters but between the author and the world), so that a great part of a problem's value is due to the number of "tries"—delusive opening moves, false scents, specious lines of play, astutely and lovingly prepared to lead the would-be solver astray.

(It seems Nabokov had a very adversarial view of fiction. In any case, we can be sure that the obscurity of this work was intentionally and carefully built into it.)

A person with more time, energy, and inclination than I, could easily get lost in these mazes; I merely noted them on the periphery of my awareness as I made my way through the work. With a narrator as unreliable as Kinbote, the wary reader cannot trust a thing; that there is much uncertainty is the only certain conclusion I can reach.

What prevents this undoubtedly brilliant work from reaching the heights of Lolita is the drama, the beating heart, the bright flashes of tenderness which managed to make a book about a reprehensible man committing a heinous deed into high art. The appeal of Pale Fire is, by contrast, largely to the mind. The basic arc of the story is known almost from the beginning; we are, if often interested, seldom surprised. The characters, though compelling, are not as multidimensional as dear Humbert, who lives and breathes in the pages of Lolita; and the meta-fictional mystery, though it inspires fascination, does not tug at the heart or chill the spin. In short, Nabokov's artistry managed to strangle his art.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Often when I've felt like this about other works, it has only meant that I wasn't yet ready, that I needed some time to digest it. I wouldn't be surprised to find myself rereading this little gem, and finding, as I hold it up once more to the pale light, more tints, hues, and subtle shades than I ever imagined.

Perhaps one of the most fine examples of Nabokov’s quote in action: “A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”

Beautifully crafted and shows Nabokov’s genius. Loses a star for me only for interest purposes. Everything I read after his Lolita falls short because of how much I adore that novel. Pale Fire is a heavy novel and needs its reader’s astute attention, and re-reading of lines and passages (for me) to follow.

“The moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

عنوان آتش کم فروغ از صحنه ی سوم پرده ی چهارم تیمون آتنی اثر شکسپیر گرفته شده :
تیمون چنین با دزدان سخن میگوید:
خرشید دزد است، دریا را می فریبد
و آنرا چپاول میکند؛ ماه دزدی بی چون و چراست،
نور کم فروغش را از خورشید می قاپد؛
دریا دزد است...

به راستی که این کتاب شاهکار ولادیمیر ناباکوف است.. بعد از چندین باز خواندن چه ترجمه و چه اصل کتاب، بازهم از درک کردن حتی گوشه ای از این کتاب درماندم..

ترجمه ی کتاب توسط جناب بهمن خسروی بسیار ضعیف بود، اما این دلیل بر ضعف قدرت مترجم نبود، چرا که نثر ناباکوف را نمیتوان ترجمه کرد