NPPF: Canto Three: Chron & Analysis Pt 2 of 2

[Vincent A. Maeder]

Pale Fire: Canto Three: Chronology and Analysis: Part 2 of 2

The balance of Canto Three from stanza twenty through thirty-four
recounts Mr. Shade's brush with death while lecturing to the Crashaw
Club, a probable reference to the poet Richard Crashaw (1613-49), about
Why Poetry Is Meaningful to Us.  During the question period, Mr. Shade
has a heart attack and, as he concludes, a near-death or death
experience.  The fortunate doctor/Crashaw devotee sitting in the front
row revives the poet and informs him that he was not dead, though "half
a shade" referring probably to the heart attack from which he was
brought back.  V58.19-60.8/lines 683-728.

In his near-death experience, Mr. Shade recounts seeing a strange, "tall
white fountain" which was made "not of atoms" and that the fountain was
not a fountain but rather some other thing that only residents of the
afterlife could say.  V59.14-27/lines 706-719.  He recounts the
experience to the trusty doctor who derides him and reports that a heart
attack can result in hallucination (because of a hypoxic event).
V60.1-6/lines 622-27.

Mr. Shade comes across the story of a similar account in a magazine of a
Mrs. Z. who recounted seeing a fountain in a near-death experience.  Mr.
Shade tracks down Mrs. Z., drives to meet her to discuss her experience,
but finds a lover of his poetry and his is unable to discuss the
fountain of her vision.  Later he finds the author of the story, Mr.
Coates, has the original article which recounts not a fountain, but a
mountain.  The result is that our poet relents in his obsession with the
"abyss" and finds hope through the discovery of the "correlated pattern
in the game".  V60.27-63.27/lines 747-834.

An interesting series of images surfaces in stanzas thirty-two through
thirty-four.  It is here that Mr. Shade discovers the conspiracy of the
Them that Mr. Pynchon uses as his theme.  However, where Mr. Pynchon's
conclusion is that the conspiracy of the Them grinds the self down, Mr.
Nabokov's theme takes a decidedly different tack; the discovery that the
preterite can sense Their greater plan gives his characters hope rather
than despair.  

It is Nabokov's "web of sense" which illuminates his characterization of
Mr. Shade at this point.  A conspiracy of them, "aloof and mute/Playing
a game of worlds, promoting pawns" and "kindling a long life here,
extinguishing/A short one there" and still stepping into history not
with some menacing military-industrial complex often associated with Mr.
Pynchon, but rather a chorus of sprites, elves and gods who would step
in to kill a Balkan king turning history over and yet hide Mr. Shade's
keys.

V.