NPPF: Notes C.1-4 - C.42

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 01:40, jbor wrote:
> on 24/8/03 1:14 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> > Why should K deliberately distort S's thought?  Seems to me most likely
> > that K honestly interpreted the bird as surviving. Why lie about
> > something that how nothing to do with the price of eggs in Zembla.
> 
> I agree with this. I don't think that Kinbote is *deliberately* distorting
> Shade's thoughts or lying; I do think that, in his haste to find and
> elaborate on references to Charles the Beloved and Zembla in the poem, he
> accidentally misses or misinterprets many of the literal references, and
> some of the structural and thematic technicalities, which are evident.

This is often the case but on the bird I think he might has gotten it
right. 

> 
> Like the inclusion of the sentence about the "very loud amusement park right
> in front of my lodgings" on the first page of the Preface, by way of
> Kinbote's unintentional misreading of the bird's fate in this first note
> Nabokov foregrounds for the reader that something is askew, that there are
> rather large gaps between what Shade intended the poem to mean and what
> Kinbote thinks or decides it means.
> 
> That's the way I read it, anyway.
> 

To my way of thinking the K's commentary serves several functions:

To show K is on the verge of a mental breakdown. (a cry for help maybe)

To tell two quite interesting additional stories (additional to S's
story)

And last but not least to serve the normal and essential purpose of an
editor's commentary on a long narrative poem. It is there to helps us
understand "Pale Fire," though admittedly in quite an unusual manner.

Now on with the read.

P.