NPPF Comm2: Parents, part 2

[Don Corathers]

Thanks to all who replied to my request for guidance on handling the learned
critical insights of others in posting notes. There doesn't seem to be any
consensus on this question. I guess we will each steer by our own lights,
which is fine with me.

My personal preference is to stay in the shallower water of the published
criticism for a while longer, to let the conversation unfold more naturally
and incrementally, and that's what I'm going to try to do in the rest of the
notes I'll post on the second section of the commentary. I'll pick up on p
101, where I trailed off a few days ago.

An entry-level observation that can be made as we begin to explore the
Zemblan part of Kinbote's story is that, if in fact he is not Charles Xavier
the Beloved, he made all this stuff up. Not only the story of Gradus
stalking the king and shooting the wrong man, but all of Charles II's
personal history, and possibly even all of Zembla, are fabrications.

Kinbote begins his Zemblaiad with a wonderfully comic portrait of the king's
father, Alfin the Vague--vague to his son, who cannot remember his father's
face, and to his subjects, whom he occasionally addressed in the few phrases
of French and Danish he knew.

Kinbote's narrative can be sorted into three piles. (It can be sorted into a
lot of different piles, I guess, but these are three that seem useful to
me.) First is his account of his life in New Wye. Not exactly verifiable,
observed through the deeply flawed lens of Kinbote's consciousness, it is
nevertheless the most nearly reliable part of his story. The second is his
biography of Charles II and his account of the king's escape from Zembla,
which seems to have been invented at least in part after his arrival in the
United States but before the spring of 1959, when he began relating the tale
to Shade. The third is the Gradus story, which Kinbote could not have
fabricated before Jack Grey shot Shade. Dividing Kinbote's narrative this
way gives us a scheme for tracing his sources, the consonances and analogues
between the New Wye part of the narrative-the Kinbote experiences that we
have some fragile reason to believe actually might have happened-and the
Charles II and Gradus stories-the ones we're pretty sure he's shucking us
about.

One that practically leaps off the page is the story of Alfin's death by
crashing an airplane into a building. It's a perfect reflection (excuse me)
of the action described in the first two lines of "Pale Fire," and we know
that Kinbote read the poem before he wrote about the death of Alfin. (Since
Kinbote didn't read "Pale Fire" until after the murder, this particular item
should probably go into a sub-pile: embellishments of the Charles II story
that Kinbote made after Shade's death. We know that Kinbote told at least
part of Alfin's biography to Shade because he relates, with a whiff of a
sense of betrayal, that Shade retold in the faculty lounge the story of
Alfin losing an emperor.)

Of course, if as some believe John Shade had a hand in Kinbote's work, the
account of Alfin's death resonates with the poem in a different way.

In either case, it is significant that within three pages we are given a
connection between John Shade's father and the waxwing (Bombycilla shadei),
and reminded of the bird's fatal smack into the glass, and then shown
Charles Kinbote's father crashing an airplane into the scaffolding around a
new hotel, his fist raised in triumph.

"that very last photograph (Christmas 1918)..." The photograph would have
been made only a few days before Alfin's death. It contains yet another
image of flight ("little monoplane of chocolate") and also, oddly, the
likeness of the face that Kinbote/Charles, although he describes the rest of
the picture as if he is holding it in his hand, is "unable to recall."

"Old Style to New..." The switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar,
which in 1918 meant skipping thirteen days to get in synch with the rest of
the world. Russia made the change in January 1918, (the day after January 31
became February 14). The Zemblans apparently switched at the end of that
year, causing the confusion about the regnal dates of Alfin, who was killed
on one of the last days of December 1918.

Amphitheatricus: Gr. amphi, on both sides: of both kinds : both  + Gr.
theatron, fr. theasthai, to view, fr. thea, act of seeing

Uranograd. For its remoteness, after the planet? Two choices in Greek
mythology (from www.theoi.com) : Urania (Ourania): the Muse of astronomical
writings. Uranus (Ouranos): the ancient personification of the sky, which
was thought to be a solid dome of bronze. He was the first ruler of the
universe but was castrated and deposed by his son Cronus.

"What emperor?" The only emperor in Europe at the time, I think, would have
been Franz Josef, who presided over the Austro-Hungarian Empire as Emperor
of Austria from 1848-1916 and King of Hungary from 1867-1916.

Santos Dumont. (According to the Smithsonian, the name is hyphenated.)
Brazilian-born aviation pioneer who, working in France in the years before
WW I, built the first successful European heavier-than-air craft. A picture
of the mosquito-like LaDemoiselle can be seen at:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/Santos-Dumont/DI41.htm

"smashed two Farmans..." Another early French airplane.

Colonel Peter Gusev. The apparent reason for the Zemblan passion for
parachuting. This attraction to falling through the sky turns up memorably
in Kinbote's meditation on suicide: "The ideal drop is from an aircraft,
your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled
off--farewell, shootka (little chute)!" (221)

More soon.

Don