NPPF - Canto One - more notes

[David Morris]

--- Jasper Fidget <jasper at hatguild.org> wrote:
> 
> ln 62: "Of the stiff vane so often visited": see Nabokov's "The Vane
Sisters".  From Boyd: "the ghosts of two dead women waylay the narrator's
attention through tricks of light and shade, and without his realizing, guide
his actions and words, even as he expresses explicitly the hopelessness of his
attempt to discern some glimpse of the sisters beyond death."  (Boyd, _The
Magic of Artistic Discovery_, 138)

Has anyone here read "The Vane Sisters?"  This theme of ghosts guiding the
thoughts of an unaware living narrator/writer is the heart of the Boyd II
interpretation of PF.  I haven't read all of his "Shade and Shape in Pale Fire"
(but I will).  What I have read of it seems hopelessly muddled by its seeing
both Shade's poem (maybe even his death) as being guided from the beyond, and
then seeing him as doing the same thing to Kinbote as he writes the Commentary.
 I'll read the whole thing before I say any more about it.

David Morris

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