Ο Ναμπόκοφ δεν είναι ένας ακόμα ετερόφωτος γραφιάς. Σε ευθεία αντίθεση με τον τίτλο του μυθιστορήματος αυτού (σεξπηρική εικόνα που παραπέμπει στη Σελήνη και στο δάνειο από τον Ήλιο φως, πάντα όμως χλωμό), ο συγγραφέας είναι ο Εωσφόρος της Τέχνης.

Τι είδους τέχνη είναι όμως αυτή την οποία φέρει το εωθινό φως της λογοτεχνίας του; Απαιτητική σίγουρα, στριφνή ακόμα, ίσως δυσπρόσιτη. Για την ακρίβεια, πρόκειται (ισχύει για το σύνολο του έργου του) για ένα ακόμα εγκεφαλικό παιχνίδι στο οποίο υποβάλλει τον αναγνώστη του, απαιτώντας αμέριστη προσοχή, πνεύμα οξύ και πειθαρχία.

Ο Ναμπόκοφ δεν γράφει ρεαλιστική λογοτεχνία (καμία άξια λόγου λογοτεχνία δεν είναι "ρεαλιστική" σύμφωνα με τα λόγια του). Είναι ένας εστέτ που αδιαφορεί για την ηθική στην τέχνη ή καλύτερα, ευαγγελίζεται την άποψη (όχι ως κήρυκας, αλλά ως λογοτέχνης) πως η αισθητική είναι ταυτόχρονα και ηθική. Όπερ εστί μεθερμηνευόμενον πως το ακαλαίσθητο είναι και ανήθικο, και τίποτε σχετικό δεν θα βρούμε στο έργο του.

Ο Ναμπόκοφ εκτός από αισθητής, ή μάλλον εξαιτίας αυτού, είναι και φιλοπαίγμων. Αρέσκεται ιδίως να παίζει με το κοινό του "εν ου παικτοίς", καθότι εκεί βρίσκεται η πρόκληση – όχι η ανούσια του ατάλαντου, αλλά η εκούσια του διανοούμενου που γράφει, όπως ο ίδιος το ορίζει, με τη σπονδυλική στήλη. Όχι μόνο με το μυαλό, όχι μόνο με το συναίσθημα, παρά με το πάθος του επιστήμονα και με την υπομονή του καλλιτέχνη.

Για ακόμα μια φορά (όπως και στη Λολίτα), ο ήρωας του βιβλίου είναι ένας απροσδιόριστος χαρακτήρας που κινείται στο… χρωματικό μεταίχμιο, ένας αδιάφορα συμπαθής αρχικά, σταδιακά αντιπαθής χαρακτήρας που διηγείται μια ιστορία, κατά το δοκούν. Εν τάχει, στο πρώτο μέρος έχουμε ένα εκτενές ποίημα που υποτίθεται άφησε πίσω του ο συγγραφέας του (και δευτερεύων ήρωας) λίγο πριν πεθάνει, ενώ το δεύτερο και πιο μακροσκελές μέρος περιλαμβάνει τον σχολιασμό του εν λόγω ποιήματος από τον φίλο (;) και κάτοχο του magnum opus του συγγραφέα, του οποίου την άκρως υποκειμενική οπτική καλούμαστε να αναγνώσουμε.

Κάθε διήγηση λοιπόν, σύμφωνα με την λογοτεχνική θεωρία του Ναμπόκοφ, αδυνατεί να είναι ρεαλιστική και ειλικρινής, καθώς εμπεριέχει σπέρματι την υποκειμενικότητα του δημιουργού της, του λογοτέχνη εν προκειμένω. Εναπόκειται στον υπομονετικό και φίλεργο αναγνώστη να ξεμπλέξει το κουβάρι της αφήγησης.

Εκεί ακριβώς κρύβεται -στα φανερά- η γοητεία του αυθεντικού έργου τέχνης. Το αφηγηματικό κουβάρι δεν βρίσκεται εκεί προς επίλυση, διότι εδώ η απάντηση δεν έχει καμία πραγματική σημασία. Το ίδιο το κείμεν��, η δομή του, το ύφος του, είναι ταυτόχρονα μέσο και σκοπός, όπως ξετυλίγεται σταδιακά εμπρός στα μάτια μας. Η πειραματική διάθεση του Ναμπόκοφ είναι κάτι παραπάνω από προφανής, η διακειμενικότητα, η "αλληλοπεριχώρηση των εναντιομόρφων" που ξεπηδά από τις σελίδες και αναπόφευκτα οδηγεί στην τελική λύση, από μόνη της μια αρχή, μια επανάγνωση – ακριβώς όπως θα την ήθελε ο ίδιος ο Ναμπόκοφ, για τον οποίον η έννοια της μίας και μόνης ανάγνωσης ήταν απλά αδιανόητη.

Κάθε επίσκεψη είναι μια νέα θεώρηση, εξάλλου, επαναφέροντας αέναα το προφανές: Η Τέχνη είναι η μόνη σταθερά στο πλαίσιο ενός πεπερασμένου βίου, του οποίου το τέλος παραμένει αμετάκλητο και οριστικό.

Friends, Goodreaders, Nabokov fans, help! I can see how this is going: p100 (Kinbote’s description of the king’s flight through the secret passage in his wardrobe just gone) and I’m flagging. Earlier I’d decided not to take note, as I read, of the many verbal quirks that irritated me, but by “Rumours rumbled” on p93 (with “hopeless and helpless”, “Parisian panders”, “spectral spider”, “feminine fascination” and, I’m sure, many others in the 10 pages preceding) I became so incensed I started jotting. I open to a page at random: “But let me not pursue this tabulation of nonsense.” Please don’t! Or this: “The respective impacts of Marxism and Freudism being talked of...” Bleurgh!

So OK, I get it, Kinbote’s a pompous, self-important madman – much like Humbert if I remember rightly? And for a few pages, for the length of the foreword, this might not rankle. But to give damn near the whole book to him? Almost every Nabokov fan praises his style first and foremost, but here the style is subsumed by Kinbote’s, and Kinbote’s is hideous. The poem had its moments; the prose repels me outright with an intrinsic ugliness no amount of irony can dispell. As a prose writer, Nabokov seems bored, hardly trying, safe behind the Kinbote mask, where he can ascribe any indulgence to the character. Nabokov, I guess, thinks irony negates kitsch, but I don’t think so. He’s playing to the stands, showboating, hitting the same old sentimental notes; that it’s all ever so slightly out of tune doesn’t make it avant garde.

So how (in the intro to my Everyman’s edition) can someone named Richard Rorty write with such assurance about what a “good time” Nabokov gives us, about “so much aesthetic bliss”? “We too wonder why Shade was so insensitive and cruel as to have made no use of the wonderful material his friend Kinbote was constantly feeding him.” Really? Wonderful material?! It all seems like so much 2D cartoon prattle to me – not that I dislike cartoons, but I simply don’t care about this one. And no I haven’t (as Rorty suggests) forgotten John or Hazel Shade; on the contrary, they’re all I care about here! If Pale Fire is a sleight-of-hand designed to make me “forget first and remember later” it isn’t working. And no, I’m not “amused at the way he [Kinbote] blithely intrudes himself into what is, in theory, a commentary on the poem”, nor “completely caught up in Kinbote’s hopes and fears”, nor do I get a “thrill from reading about the copulation of young faunlets”.

For those disturbed by the hating, don’t fret. I’m starting to think (have been starting to think for a while now) that I’m a limited reader, always searching for reflections of my own concerns, for what inspires and enhances my own views on fiction. I read what I like (though in the broadest sense of the word: sometimes I “like” to be made unhappy, or confused, or frightened, so long as I’m enlightened). I read what moves me. And I read in a hurry. Which is not to say I rush the words themselves; I try, I really try, to savour/digest/understand them. But rarely do I sit before a book with the feeling that there’s nothing I could do which would better educate me than to read that book.

Another commentator speaks of Nabokov’s “adversarial relationship” with his readers, and maybe that’s the problem, sure: maybe he just won’t work at seducing me. But with so many readers hailing his prose as beautiful and fun and hilarious, I don’t think that’s the problem. Clearly, I just don’t share his sense of humour, or his taste. (Kinbote to Shade re Shakespeare: “You appreciate particularly the purple passages?” Shade: “Yes, my dear Charles, I roll upon them as a grateful mongrel on a spot of turf fouled by a Great Dane.” While I appreciate, to some extent, the metaphor, the tone makes me nauseous.) Hence, whatever bitter pill Nabokov wants me to swallow is just that, bitter, and the sweetness surrounding it nothing but saccharine. And whatever clues to the cryptic crossword are buried in here, I need to care about solving that crossword before I’ll be bothered hunting them out. (Confession: I don’t like crosswords. Maybe that’s a sticking point.)

One thing I do like: the structure, the conceit. Fictional poem hijacked by fictional commentator (or is it?) – it’s a classic! I’m a big fan (a huge fan) of Borges and his similar faux-essayistic devices. But I need it to work, to pay dividends that an ordinary structure wouldn’t pay. And from this remove, I have to say “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” seems far bolder and more innovative: to write an essay about an impossible text, an invisible text, yet a text we all know and can read, now that is mind-bending.

I’ve scanned the internet for clues as to what Pale Fire could mean for readers – what deeper significance it could have – but mostly I’ve come up with a bunch of superlatives. (One guy, in The Observer, not only names it Novel of the 20th Century, but claims: “‘Pale Fire’ the poem within the novel may well come to be looked upon as the Poem of the Century in its own right.” (!!!)) Apparently, it’s deep, deeper than deep, sublime. But could anyone give me a clue as to why? Why is Nabokov important? How does he make you feel (aside from dazzled by his style)? Why must Pale Fire exist in this form and no other?

Sublime, to me (I thought as I walked to the beach the other night, hating Nabokov), is the pale fire of the full moon on the ocean in the still warm night. In Pale Fire, the moon is a photo of the moon, the ocean a cardboard theatre-prop of the ocean. All I can guess is that, for those who can stomach it, by the end it’s all inverted, kitsch made a riddle whose answer is beauty. And hell, maybe I’ll find out for myself someday, but for now it’s like I’m at a party and everyone’s dancing to the most godawful music and I’ve wasted my entrance fee and I’m gonna go home with some poisonous tune stuck in my head. I’ll admit, it’s an extreme reaction, and who knows, maybe it augers something deep at work between the text and me. But as I feel virtually none of the “almost obscenely sensual pleasure” (The Observer again) felt by the proponents of this book, I think it the wrong time to try to fathom the effect.

Apologies for the rant. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking reading this; it’s not as if my reaction comes as a surprise. And at least Kinbote’s voice was believable – a hard task.

I stopped at p128.

Hmmm. This is a tough book to rate.

I'm not going to claim it is a hard book to understand -- but now that I have said it, I realize that the reading level is pretty high, with a number of archaic, obscure, or author-created words; some complex grammar; a definitely deliberate complex structure, 1000+ lines of modern (I mean difficult) poetry, a non-English (and quite possibly unreliable) narrator, and highly complex characters working both on- and off-page.

So, I guess it IS a hard book.
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Here's what's up...
Within Nabokov's work is another book, the last poem of famed American poet John Shade and the review by his fellow professor, the foreign-born Charles Kinbote. Except Kinbote's review quickly spirals away from the poem into a series of personal images from his life in his native Zembla, tales of the reign and flight of the recently deposed King, his (perceived) friendship with Shade, the last days of Shade's life, and the supposed path and aims of Shade's killer.

So, what makes this book hard for me to grasp, is the question of what things were real, what things were misunderstandings and malapropisms and misunderstandings of the narrator, what things the mis-perceptions of a dysfunctional personality (and what were outright fabrications), and finally (!), what may have been unintentional confusions caused by a foreign-born author from an era 50 years removed from my own.
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So there it is. Quite likely a classic, quite likely written for someone smarter and wise in the ways of life than I, and I am quite likely your unreliable guide to it, when I really want to get back to my beer and football game.
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Cheers, mates, and Happy New Year!

First read at the suggestion of former Chicago cop and graduate English professor (of Chaucer) John McNally. I taught this book a few times in
modern lit courses, and it continued to delight. It's one of the few parodies of academic poets and their place in the modern university--hilarious, the academic introducer prof annoyed at sound intrusions while he writes his introduction. The poet of Pale Fire is, as the title suggests, a pale successor to romantics like Wordsworth, but a rhyming Wordsworth. That can sum up a lot of 20C American verse, especially those well-employed by universities.

Nabokov wrote standing at a wide desk-lecturn; he translated the greatest Russian poem, Evgeny Onegin by Pushkin, but in such an idiosyncratic way that it's almost useless except as Nabokviana. His autobiography is almost as revealing as Lolita, perhaps the only 20C novel really about love, though a perverse and perverted love--maybe that's what singles it out as "the only," as well as 20C.
Я прочитал некоторые из Пушкина, и немного Набокова на русском языке, в основном из своих ранних работ.
I can't find this on my shelf--probably I kept it in my office, and all those books are in my wife's studio half an hour away, a huge space in an old Fall River, MA, granite mill--built on wooden pylons, so the Queqechan river that formed the falls (now they're under ground) must be kept at a certain height to keep bugs from destroying the pylons. A neighbor Hawes family that wrote the law on that in the mid-19C; it became riparian law east of the Mississippi River.
But my latest book contains 20 parodies of poets like Ashbery, R Wilbur, Angelou, even Dickinson, whom I consder the best poet in history--and I did spend a year trying to imitate her, "I practice Dying--every Night--/But have not learned to--still--/Though Talented--by Mortal Bones--/ For such a Common Skill."
On my book's cover, with line drawings inside, is a dog and poet, Wordsworth: "Of many words I have no need,/ like all those human lies--/say, where they've been. With one sniff/ I know, the noser knows."