Fw: NPPF Comm2: Parents, part 2

[Don Corathers]

I wrote:

> 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.

There is (at least) one more way of reading this. It is conceivable that
Kinbote *did* relate the story of Alfin crashing into the building to Shade
before July, and that Shade transmuted the incident into the opening image
of the poem. This might be some of what Kinbote means when he says on the
second reading of "Pale Fire" he detected "that dim distant music, those
vestiges of color in the air" that convinced him that the poem actually did
contain his story, and "all the many subliminal debts to me." (297)

Don










----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo at fuse.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 10:29 PM
Subject: NPPF Comm2: Parents, part 2


> Thanks to all who replied to my request for guidance on handling the learn
ed
> 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.
>
>
> "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
>
>
>
>
>
>