NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

on 13/7/03 1:35 PM, Jasper Fidget wrote:

> Another way to phrase this concern is by asking whether the poem "Pale Fire"
> compares well to the novel _Pale Fire_.  If removed from the surrounding
> commentary, would "Pale Fire" by John Shade be worth reading?  If so, would
> it be a *great* work?  Kinbote's contribution to the poem almost certainly
> gives it greater value than it would have had on its own, which strangely
> fulfills Kinbote's desperate desire to have assisted Shade with it.
[...]
> Ultimately Morris decides the Shadean interpretation is the most plausible;
> see the article for his insightful evaluation in full, findable here:
> 
> http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/morris1.htm
> 

>From that essay:

    But one will search in vain for any direct statement from VN
    as to the ultimate literary value of "Pale Fire." His reading
    of part of Canto Two at Harvard thus must serve as an indirect
    statement: It was a poem he was proud of, and was willing to
    record for the ages.

I don't know that this is a particularly convincing argument. I'm sure that
Alexander Pope was proud of his 'The Rape of the Lock' as well, and that he
read it aloud on occasion; and it's worth recalling the prominence of Pope
throughout all facets of the text of _Pale Fire_. A satiric poem such as
Pope's can be, and certainly is regarded as, a "great" one, and it's not at
all inconsistent or implausible to imagine that Nabokov put much creative
effort into the composition of the poem by his "invented" poet, and that he
was pleased with the results, but that he still intended it to be a satire.

The other thing which doesn't quite gel for me is the assumption that
Nabokov was trying to conceal the fact of his own overall authorship of the
novel, his ultimate "control" over the fiction. Plainly, he wasn't. The
puzzles of the text, and their ultimate answerability, answerabilities or
unanswerability, are intentional ones. I think that in this respect Nabokov
himself, and _Pale Fire in particular, probably stand at one of those cusp
points between Modernism and postmodernism (see eg. McHale 1987, 1992), and
that Nabokov still perceived the author's position -- his own position -- in
respect to the text as one of preeminence, even though, admittedly, the
themes and structural complexities within the text do challenge and
problematise that whole relationship between "authorship" and "authority". I
don't think Nabokov sees this paradox as an issue. Thus, the question of
whether Shade or Kinbote or any other character could write "as well as"
Nabokov seems to me to be irrelevant. It is Nabokov who can write as well as
Nabokov: his characters are the *products* of his writing, not the
producers. Certainly, however, I can imagine his bemusement at the critical
controversies surrounding the "authorship" of _Pale Fire_, and I can imagine
his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when in interviews and memoirs he
subsequently referred to Kinbote or Shade as if they were real people.

best