NPPF: Keith's Shocking Theory (was Preliminary: The Epigraph)

[Jasper Fidget]

> From: David Morris [mailto:fqmorris at yahoo.com]
> 
> --- Jasper Fidget <jasper at hatguild.org> wrote:
> > (Shade and Kinbote are mirrored in so many other ways, these characters
> are
> practically begging to be read that way.)
> 
> I'm not sure if Keith has made this claim, but Kunin has speculated that
> Kinbote/Shade are the same person, and the whole of Zembla and King
> Charles
> (and thus Kinbote) is a manifestation of Shade's mental illness stemming
> fron a
> childhood sexual trauma.  But the Nabokov list is very skeptical...
> 
> David Morris
> 

Andrew Field thought Zembla was a "homosexual fantasy" for Kinbote (whatever
that is exactly), but that it had "no connection with the John Shade we know
from the poem." (_The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov_, p. 343).  Certainly
for Kinbote there's a whole lotta loving going on in Onhava (he's even got
the palace set up as some kind of sexual circus at one point), and refers
often to "our manly Zemblan customs".  Given all the homosexual detail and
escapades in the Commentary (not all of which is indicated to be pederasty),
it's difficult to believe Zembla created by Shade.  There's no indication of
homosexuality in the poem (that I'm aware of anyway), although I suppose
Zembla as the land of negatives and reflections might be Shade's adamant
insistence on what he determinedly is *not*....

I find it interesting that Kinbote's Zemblan sexual adventures seem to meet
with less resistance and fewer difficulties than those in New Wye.  For
instance, Bob breaking K's heart by cheating on him, Emerald apparently
resisting K's advances and subsequently mocking him, his discovery of the
gardener's impotency, even the trees getting in the way of his spying on
Shade (itself a kind of predatory sexual act).  Perhaps this goes to Field's
idea: that in Zembla the sex is abundant, free, and easy, and nobody gets
hurt...?

ajaKasper