NPPF - Canto One - more notes

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 09:34, David Morris wrote:
> 
> --- 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.


I can only hope that nobody rejects the new theory on the spot merely on
the grounds that spiritualism is a lot of hooey. Nabokov is on record as
holding that great novels are great fairy tales. (something to that
effect)

p.