Nefariously Fun Satire of Literary Criticism, Satyriasis and "Bold Virilia"

Nabokov was such a pure genius in performing brilliant magic with words of the English language, as well as in creating playful and at times side-splitting satire that lacerates the objects of its scorn. In Pale Fire, Nabokov targeted academia of literature and literary criticism and, to a degree, all males' preoccupation with sex .

Nabokov isn't my favorite author by a longshot, but given his masterpieces in Lolita and Pale Fire, I'm not going out on a limb when I say he is probably second on the list of maestros of English linguistics, right behind Shakespeare. I only include the below lengthy quotes because this is the rare occasion in which the use of the language is as important as what is said.

The novel is split into two parts: first is a 999-line poem autobiographical of a fictional John Shade, a professor of lit at a New England college; then comes the commentary--the large majority of the novel--written by a professor named Charles Kinbote in another department of the college but who lives next door to Shade and his wife.

In reading Prof. Kinbote's extensive exegesis on the poem, it becomes readily apparent that something is amiss with him, really amiss. He implies that he is the exiled king of a country called Zembla, specifically that he is “Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla, surnamed The Beloved.” As to his assumed name Kinbote, he derived it from the “king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end.”

Soon you wonder exactly how delusional Kinbote is, given that he believes that Shade's poem brims with references to himself (imaginary as they may seem), transforming through his commentary every few lines of the poem into a frame around himself and his fantasy realm of Zembla.

The novel is also somewhat of a mystery that you must decipher as to who killed John Shade after Kinbote tells us that he is safekeeping the "Pale Fire" poem manuscript and all notecards containing the poem.

Later, the reader learns that "immediately upon John Shade’s demise, [the head of the department] circulated a mimeographed letter that began:

Several members of the Department of English are painfully concerned over the fate of a manuscript poem, or parts of a manuscript poem, left by the late John Shade. The manuscript fell into the hands of a person who not only is unqualified for the job of editing it, belonging as he does to another department, but is known to have a deranged mind. One wonders whether some legal action, etc.”

Yet, long before this, clues abound of Kinbote's psychosis. For example,

“What would I not have given for the poet’s suffering another heart attack (see line 691 and note) leading to my being called over to their house, all windows ablaze, in the middle of the night, in a great warm burst of sympathy, coffee, telephone calls, Zemblan herbal receipts (they work wonders!), and a resurrected Shade weeping in my arms (“There, there, John”).”

[In a conversation with John Shade's wife:] “Speaking of novels,” I said, “you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more,” and,

“In Zembla, where most females are freckled blondes, we have the saying: belwif ivurkumpf wid snew ebanumf, “A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony.”

Additionally, Kinbote has a perverted mind relating to pubescent males, including these Paphian passages in his commentary:

“the little angler, a honey-skinned lad, naked except for a pair of torn dungarees, one trouser leg rolled up, frequently fed with nougat and nuts, but then school started or the weather changed”

“When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace.”

I learned a new word, "virilia." I'll let you look it up...or guess.

Often hilarious asides to the running "commentary" on the poem hit you out of the blue. Such as Kinbote's significant problems in consummating his marriage to Princess Disa.

“He farced himself with aphrodisiacs, but the anterior characters of her unfortunate sex kept fatally putting him off. One night when he tried tiger tea, and hopes rose high, he made the mistake of begging her to comply with an expedient which she made the mistake of denouncing as unnatural and disgusting. Finally he told her that an old riding accident was incapacitating him but that a cruise with his pals and a lot of sea bathing would be sure to restore his strength.”

Also, Kinbote discloses his frequent infidelities, resulting in problems with Princess Disa.

“He ... solemnly [swore] he had given up, or at least would give up, the practices of his youth; but everywhere along the road powerful temptations stood at attention. He succumbed to them from time to time, then every other day, then several times daily—especially during the robust regime of Harfar Baron of Shalksbore, a phenomenally endowed young brute.... Curdy Buff—as Harfar was nicknamed by his admirers—had a huge escort of acrobats and bareback riders, and the whole affair rather got out of hand so that Disa, upon unexpectedly returning from a trip to Sweden, found the Palace transformed into a circus”

A highest recommendation. My apologies for the size of this; I hope it's not too much to take it all in. It was not nearly as hard as I thought. I am just now coming to realize the depth of Nabokov's cunning linguistics. I wish I could hit that, or even near that level.

Μέρες αναρωτιόμουν τι δύνατο να πρωτοσχολιάσω στα τεκταινόμενα της "σκιώδης" συμπεριφοράς ενός κρυπτικά αφοπλιστικού κειμένου, δυσνόητα προσβάσιμου, ερεθιστικά κολάσιμου.
Αποκλείοντας τις γαργαλιστικές συνήθειες ευφυολογημάτων, το Ναμποκοφικό ιδεώδες παρουσιάζεται σε όρια...κωμικής μέθης. Ή αλλιώς, πώς ένα Σαιξπηρικό φρασεολόγιο συντρέχει με μυριάδες αναφορές γεγονότων, στιχομυθιών, συμβεβηκότων, ανάμεσα σε απόπειρες δολοφονίας και κυνηγητά βασιλιάδων σε υπόγειες στοές και λιμνάζουσες ροές.
Όπου, για να είμαστε ειλικρινείς, το μυστήριο της συγγραφικής δεινότητας βρίσκεται, κατά κύριο λόγο, στα πλάτη απόκρυψης, ο λαβύρινθος που έχει συγκροτηθεί οικεία άνευ καθοδηγήσεων στον αναγνώστη, δίχως, επίσης, το προφανές ως ηθικό αφήγημα. Ο Κίνμποτ στις μεγαλόστομες περιγραφές, ο Σέιντ πίσω από φτιασιδωμένες προστριβές, φαντάσματα στην κυριολεξία ή στο χάος του μεσονυχτίου: τα γλωσσο-παίγνια προσφέρουν ηδονές, επι-πλοκές που δύσκολα θα φανταζόμασταν, προτού ο Ναμπόκοφ παραδώσει έναν λογοτεχνικό πίνακα, αισθητικής αναρχίας.

Pale Fire is another great American novel narrated by another great Nabokovian vampire, the academic showboat Dr. Charles Kinbote. This particular parasite wraps the leathery wings of his sexy but suffocating rhetoric (syntax that seduces, diction that deflowers) around the last poetical work of John Shade, a 999 (or 1000) line poem entitled “Pale Fire.” Kinbote is only too happy to abuse his coveted position as the sole editor of “Pale Fire” by infesting the poem’s Forward and line-by-line Commentary with an abundance of autobiographical anecdotes about his “friendship” with the poet during the last few months before Shade’s murder, picaresque accounts of Kinbote’s mysterious native country Zembla, tales of said country’s political intrigues and monarchal woes, gossip about Shade’s and Kinbote’s colleagues at the college where both teach, a generous lathering here and there of Kinbote’s personal likes and dislikes in literary art…oh and let’s not forget Charles Kinbote’s (who also happens to share a first name with Charles II, the recently ousted King of Zembla whose present royal whereabouts, by the by, are a dubiously kept secret) no you can’t forget Professor Kinbote’s fetishistic preoccupation with the supple form of the young male’s body as well as acrobatic acts of homosexuality. Despite Kinbote’s obsession with making the poem about himself and his memories (or delusions, depending on which of the several ways you choose to interpret this book; not that any particular stance is better than another) of poor troubled Zembla, Shade’s “Pale Fire” stands as a lively rumination on mortality, the afterlife, and the suicide of the poet’s daughter. Considered one of the greats in the niche genre of “anti-novels”, Pale Fire outshines many of its successors by both defying formal conventions and embracing a love for suspenseful storytelling.

To write an enigmatic and wonderful poem and then to write a book of convoluted and profound commentaries to it – only the genius of Vladimir Nabokov was capable to make this literary feat.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane…

Poets and their ideals… Poets and their deities…

Line 101: No free man needs a God
When one considers the numberless thinkers and poets in the history of human creativity whose freedom of mind was enhanced rather than stunted by Faith, one is bound to question the wisdom of this easy aphorism.

Fire is the stuff poet’s soul is made of…
A soul of a poet may burn with a pale fire but the light is too bright to look at.

Nabokov has long been a huge obvious hole on my "read" shelf, which is a funny thing to say because it implies that my "read" shelf is more substantial than a few mangy pieces of string recrossed and knotted in a sad effort to make it seem as if it's not actually just one giant gaping hole of missing books that it's sad and troubling I probably won't ever manage to make it through before I die. Yes, I did read and greatly appreciated Lolita back in high school, but that was quite a ways back into the last century, a time that barely counts now as having even happened, and in the decades since I'm not sure what's happened but Nabokov has somehow gathered force in my weak mind and come to loom as some kind of fierce and frightening demigod of a writer, far too intellectual and too gifted for the mere likes of me.

In fact, I'm not sure what made me finally pick this up at the library. I can't help tying everything these days to our broiling political climate, and perhaps here I can point to the rise in virulent xenophobia (on the right of course -- but perhaps I must also take into account a touch of anti-Russian hysteria on the left...?) and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Because doesn't Nabokov himself exemplify the primal fear of the sly and infinitely resourceful immigrant who will take our job -- presuming of course that our job is writing Great American Novels -- and do it infinitely better than any of us ever could? That he will learn our language and master it so well that our own American English sounds dumb when we try, that he'll use words we'll need to look up in the OED and that when we don't find one there, and google it, we'll learn that the only recorded use of said word is in fact by this author in this very novel, and how is that for the sly and resourceful hijinks of a disruptive foreigner in our midst?

I knew absolutely zilch about Pale Fire when I opened it, which is how I prefer to begin any novel, but I will offer that it concerns the arguably sly and/or somewhat resourceful hijinks of a foreigner in the midst of Nabokov's odd map of 1959's United States. What I did not fully anticipate, but wish I'd understood earlier, is that this book isn't just the "creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness... one of the great works of art this century" that Mary McCarthy proclaims it to be, grim as a cigarette cancer warning, on the cover. Before it is any of those things (and it is all those things), it's a comedy, and it is very hilarious.

There are people on here who don't like this book, and I have a hard time understanding why. Does anyone not like things that are funny? This book is funny and pretty and it is smart. This book is what nearly everyone is looking for in a significant other (I always forgot to add "nice" to that list, back when I was dating, much to my detriment, but that's a story for another day -- of course I could tell those stories here and stay on theme, but I note from other reviews that that predictable conceit has been done to death already), only much less work. You don't even have to look up all the words you don't understand; sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't, and it didn't seem to matter much in terms of my enjoyment of the book. Easy peasy! The only tough thing is finding two bookmarks, which is not really mandatory either, depending on your chosen approach.

The most satisfying thing about this book was, for me, the sensation that it was changing and shifting shape as I read, like an animal that was squirming and growing, and I don't know, molting or metamorphosing something, right there in my hands. I don't have much tolerance for postmodern trickery and if I describe the device here it will sound high-concept in that way, but for me it felt organic. Okay, but: the novel comprises a forward, a 999-line poem in four cantos, and then is followed by notes to the poem. I read each of the four cantos in its entirety then its subsequent notes, which worked well for me. As I went the book moved and opened up and felt richer and more interesting, the opposite of the way I think a postmodern trick feels. The end result was an experience that was quite lovely at times, but above anything else, enjoyable and amusing and just really a lot of fun.

So, the happy news is that I'm no longer intimidated by Nabokov, and now I want to read everything else by him! There is not any unhappy news, except that the world around us is still melting and right now pretty much sucks. I haven't had much success lately getting a break from this reality, and Pale Fire did the trick with that, so at least I've reaffirmed that fiction's still better than drugs, when it's good, and this is.

Pale Fire is a prism and a house of mirrors; however, after all of its laborious tangents and labyrinthine misdirections, for me, it’s ultimately just an ingeniously simple (and hilarious!) meditation on the human curiosity that is art.

I think the crucial point here is my use of the expression “for me”, an expression I would normally consciously avoid throwing into my reviews willy-nilly — one I find as irksome as any in the English language. It is so much of a given, you see, so central to everything I’d normally be trying to say when writing a review, that adding its unnecessary qualification to every paragraph feels entirely superfluous. It is, therefore, usually best dispensed with altogether (even if such a renunciation does occasionally lend my reviews too much of a dogmatic tone). Here, though, in this review, the personal reaction is the whole point.

What am I saying? Well, FOR ME, what Pale Fire is about is the way each of us reacts differently to a work of somebody else’s art. It’s about the way art ultimately becomes a hazy and indirect expression of reality, one which is simultaneously evidence in favour of a concrete materialist universe, yet, also one which reveals the elusive indefiniteness of the goings on between all things that exist in the midst of this realm bounded by time and space. Most importantly, Pale Fire is about how a work of art takes on a new meaning in the mind of every new observer, be that Kinbote’s mind, which freely interprets and misinterprets John Shade’s poem, or the mind of the reader of Kinbote, a mind which will be forced to interpret and misinterpret Kinbote himself. In all cases, art creates an infinite tree, the interdependent branches of which each lead to a new version of reality.

A quote which comes to mind is this one from music critic Alex Ross, writing here on the problem of Hitler’s “corrosive love of music”:

n“Although there is no point in trying to restore Schopenhauer's separation of art and state, it is equally false to claim the opposite, that art can somehow be swallowed up in history or irreparably damaged by it. Music may not be inviolable, but it is infinitely variable, acquiring a new identity in the mind of every new listener. It is always in the world, neither guilty nor innocent, subject to the ever-changing human landscape in which it moves.”
—tAlex Ross, The Rest is Noisen

Each of us imposes ourselves onto every new work of art, and, while no interpretation may be entirely invalid, likewise, none has the authority to claim absolute ownership (not even the creator). As such, the most salient quotes I found in Pale Fire were these two (unsurprisingly, two of Nabokov’s most famous):

n“…reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average “reality” perceived by the communal eye.” (p.107)

n“If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.” (p.214)

Kinbote imposes himself on Shade’s poem, trying to control it, forcing it to fit his own warped vision of reality. “It’s all about me!” he seems to say. Because his understanding of the world is far from that of most people’s, it is befitting that his understanding of Shade’s poem seems wide off the mark. He casts aside Shade’s expressions of grief, instead weakly imposing onto the work fantastical visions, violating Shade’s memory as he goes. Despite his madness, however, his interpretation is, I think, a mostly valid one, which is to say that it is self-consistent within its own forms and shapes of lunacy. Here, I’ll add that I only say “mostly valid” because Kinbote often fails to interpret aspects of the poem altogether. When this happens, he becomes frustrated that he can’t confine Shade to the whip of his straight-jacketed control. He is quick to state that there are flaws in the piece and conveniently falls back on the notion that the work is unfinished. Most amusing of all, he struggles to find an explanation for the poem’s title: “Pale Fire”. He helpfully tracks down its source (Shakespeare, naturally), but admits that its meaning eludes him.

n  “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; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol'n
From general excrement: each thing's a thief:
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheck'd theft.”
—tWilliam Shakespeare, Timon of Athensn

For this is the beauty of Nabokov’s intricate compound metaphor. The ghostly light of the moon is only a reflection, a reproduction, a tulpa of its own true and fiery source, a source that has very little in common with an eerie blue-white space rock that saves its true splendour exclusively for the hours of darkness. Through art, we experience an echo of reality in the same way a nighttime traveller looking up at the sky experiences the vast obscured masterpiece of the sun.

Since there are hundreds of reviews of Pale Fire, and over 80 books that have been written about Nabokov's masterpiece, I'll avoid too much analysis and focus on the way I approached this book. If you've read Lolita, you know Nabokov likes unreliable narrators, and Kinbote is the classic Nabokovian example. I tried reading the book by delving into Kinbote's "notes" and referring back to the lines of the poem they referenced, but I quickly realized that Nabokov was having a bit of fun with readers who take such a literal approach, so then I read the book straight through, and like Lolita, it is, most of it, a galloping romp. The constructed world of Zembla is so detailed and interesting; now I look forward to reading Speak, Memory to hear the true account of Nab's upbringing.

There is so much going on below the surface here that I will absolutely need to read parts of the book again. Thanks to Lori for pointing out the importance of reading the Preface, and for encouraging me to finish when I got frustrated with flipping back and forth between "notes" and lines of the poem. There is so much to say about Pale Fire, that I'll confine myself to this: don't worry about all the theories about who the real narrator is, or who Botkin is, or the role of Hazel's ghost, etc. The book stands alone as a good read; once you've read the surface story, you can go back to dig into the undercurrents. This is a book to return to over and over.

Opasan Nabokov. Ruska babuška od knjige. Pajac iz kutije. Šahovski problem. Igra mačke i miša. Presavila mi mozak u perecu.

Ne, ozbiljno. Ja posle Blede vatre =

Да је ова постмодернистичка играрија била само о Шејду и коментару његове поеме, а без уплива приче-у-причи о измишљеној држави Зембли и тамошњим дворским интригама, био бих одушевљен. Овако, сва та прича у причи ми је била просто речено досадна (врло је очигледно да је Зембла инспирисана Русијом/СССР-ом).
Набоков је несумњиво мајстор када је реч о писању, али ових дана ипак од књижевности тражим мало мање повлачења за нос.

TRAMORTITA DALLA BELLEZZA E DAL GENIO

Excelentíssimo Senhor Nabokov,

Quero agradecer-lhe o magnífico presente que me ofereceu, embora ele muito me tivesse confundido. É que está tão embrulhado e enleado, que receio não o ter apreciado tanto quanto ele merece. A culpa é minha, reconheço; deveria ter-lhe obedecido quando me dizia (e, por vezes, ordenava) constantemente, para "ver verso x; ver nota ao verso y; ver prefácio" (mas quem é que consegue estar sempre a avançar e a recuar?)

Gostaria de lhe dizer o quanto gostei (e me esforcei para entender) do bonito poema que dá o nome a este Fogo Pálido e da história triste que ele conta.
Também quero que saiba o quanto me diverti com aquele tresloucado do Charles Kinbote, que diz estar a fazer uma análise do poema e está é a contar uma história mirabolante, de reis e rainhas, que nada tem a ver com a tragédia a que se refere o poema de John Shade. E, entretanto, vai fazendo chacota de tudo, inclusive de mim, leitora. (Acredita que andei mais de uma hora na internet a procurar o significado de uma palavra em latim? O Senhor põe a cabeça de um leitor "à razão de juros"!)

Quero ainda, Senhor Nabokov, dar-lhe conta da admiração que lhe tenho pela sua imaginação prodigiosa, embora me fizesse sentir muito estúpida, pois cheguei ao fim deste livro com a consciência que podia andar a lê-lo para o resto da minha vida e nem assim o entenderia completamente.
Não lhe vou dizer o que entendi deste livro (ia dizer romance, mas não creio que seja...), pois não quero cair no mesmo logro de Kinbot e procurar os significados que mais me convenham. (Neste livro também troça de quem se põe a analisar os livros que os outros escreveram, não é verdade, Senhor Nabokov?)

Para terminar, vou nomeá-lo como fiel depositário das cinco estrelas que tenho para este seu livro (imagino o que o Senhor ri destes leitores que avaliam livros com estrelas...). Entretanto, vou conhecer outros "filhos" seus: Sebastião, Lolita, Ada e talvez Laura e Gloria. Depois, espero voltar ao Fogo para reaver as estrelas que agora lhe deixo e transformá-las numa galáxia...

Muito Obrigada, Senhor Vladimir Nabokov!

Reassessment.
A mixed bag.
Readable.
2-stars.