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Pale Fire (1962) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a poem titled "Pale Fire" with commentary by a friend of the poet's. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are central characters. Pale Fire has spawned a wide variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticism. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel".

Plot introduction

Starting with the table of contents, Pale Fire looks like the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by the fictional John Shade with a Foreword, extensive Commentary, and Index by his self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote. Kinbote's Commentary takes the form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem. Here and in the rest of his critical apparatus, Kinbote explicates the poem surprisingly little. Focusing instead on his own concerns, he divulges pieces of what proves to be the plot, some of which can be connected by following the many cross-references. Thus the narration is highly nonlinear. (In 1969, the information-technology researcher Ted Nelson obtained permission from the novel's publishers to use it for a hypertext demonstration at Brown University.)

The interaction between Kinbote and Shade takes place in the fictitious small college town of New Wye, Appalachia, where they live across a lane from each other, from February to July, 1959. Kinbote writes his commentary from then to October, 1959, in a tourist cabin in the equally fictitious western town of Cedarn, Utana. Both authors recount many earlier events, Shade mostly in New Wye and Kinbote mostly in Europe, especially the "distant northern land" of Zembla.

The novel's unusual structure has attracted much attention, and it is often cited as an important example of metafiction; it has also been called a poioumenon.

Plot summary

Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel. Canto 3 focuses on Shade's search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a "faint hope" in higher powers "playing a game of worlds" as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers many details on Shade's daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe.

In Kinbote's editorial contributions he tells three stories intermixed with each other One is his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem's publication, telling readers that it lacks only line 1000. Kinbote's second story deals with Charles Xavier Vseslav, also known as Charles II, "The Beloved," the deposed king of Zembla. Charles escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries, making use of a secret passage and brave adherents in disguise. Kinbote repeatedly claims that he inspired the poem by recounting Charles's escape to Shade and that possible allusions to Charles, and to Zembla, can be detected in Shade's poem, especially in rejected drafts. However, no comprehensible reference to Charles is to be found in the poem. Kinbote's third story is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. Gradus makes his way from Zembla through Europe and America to New Wye, suffering comic mishaps. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake.

The reader soon realizes that Kinbote himself is Charles Xavier, living incognito—or, though Kinbote builds an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language, that he is insane and that his identification with Charles is a delusion, as perhaps all of Zembla is.

Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book. The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don't have to pay attention to it," but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote's suicide. One of Kinbote's annotations to Shade's poem (corresponding to line 493) addresses the subject of suicide in some detail.

Explanation of the title

As Nabokov pointed out himself, the title of John Shade's poem is from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens: "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a metaphor about creativity and inspiration. Kinbote quotes the passage but does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate Zemblan translation of the play, and in a separate note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as titles.

Some interpreters have noted a secondary reference in the book's title to Hamlet, where the Ghost remarks how the glow-worm "'gins to pale his uneffectual fire" (Act I, scene 5). The duality of the Shakespearean reference reflects the nature of this puzzle-novel; an easy and rewarding reading of the novel masks a more obscure, and therefore more rewarding, second solution

The title is first mentioned in the foreword:

"I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator..."

Initial reception

The editor of a book of Nabokov criticism states that Pale Fire excited as diverse criticism as any of Nabokov's novels. Mary McCarthy's review was extremely laudatory; the Vintage edition excerpts it on the front cover. She tried to explicate hidden references and connections. Dwight Macdonald responded by saying the book was "unreadable" and both it and McCarthy's review were as pedantic as Kinbote. Anthony Burgess, like McCarthy, extolled the book, while Alfred Chester condemned it as "a total wreck".

Some other early reviews were less decided, praising the book's satire and comedy but noting its difficulty and finding its subject slight or saying that its artistry offers "only a kibitzer's pleasure". MacDonald called the reviews he had seen, other than McCarthy's, "cautiously unfavorable".

In the 1980s, after Nabokov's reputation was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union, the novel was translated into Russian by his wife Véra, its dedicatee.

Interpretations

Some readers concentrate on the apparent story, focusing on traditional aspects of fiction such as the relationship among the characters. They may make a case that Kinbote is parasitic on Shade, or that Shade's poem is mediocre and Kinbote, the inventor of Zembla, is a true genius. In 1997, Brian Boyd published a much-discussed study arguing that the ghost of John Shade influenced Kinbote's contributions. He later expanded this essay into a book, in which he also argues that, in order to trigger Shade's poem, Hazel's ghost induced Kinbote to recount his Zemblan delusions to Shade.

Other readers see a story quite different from the apparent narrative. "Shadeans" maintain that John Shade wrote not only the poem, but the commentary as well, having invented his own death and the character of Kinbote as a literary device. According to Boyd, Andrew Field invented the Shadean theory and Julia Bader expanded it; Boyd himself espoused the theory for a time. "Kinboteans", a decidedly smaller group, believe that Kinbote invented the existence of John Shade. Boyd credits the Kinbotean theory to Page Stegner and adds that most of its adherents are newcomers to the book. Some readers see the book as oscillating undecidably between these alternatives, like the Rubin vase (a drawing that may be two profiles or a goblet).

Though a minority of commentators believe or at least accept the possibility that Zembla is as "real" as New Wye, most assume that Zembla, or at least the operetta-quaint and homosexually gratified palace life enjoyed by Charles Xavier before he is overthrown, is imaginary in the context of the story. The name "Zembla" (taken from "Nova Zembla", a former anglicization of Novaya Zemlya) may evoke popular fantasy literature about royalty such as The Prisoner of Zenda, signaling that it is not to be taken literally. As in other of Nabokov's books, however, the fiction is an exaggerated or comically distorted version of his own life as a son of privilege before the Russian Revolution and an exile afterwards, and the central murder has resemblances (emphasized by Priscilla Meyer) to Nabokov's father's murder by an assassin who was trying to kill someone else.

Some readers, starting with Mary McCarthy and including Boyd, Nabokov's annotator Alfred Appel, and D. Barton Johnson, see Charles Kinbote as an alter-ego of the insane Professor V. Botkin, to whose delusions John Shade and the rest of the faculty of Wordsmith College generally condescend. Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that Pale Fire "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman." The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references leads readers to this "plum". The Index, supposedly created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring back to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such individual is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, the "Gradus" who kills Shade is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting. Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade, who resembled Goldsworth.

Still other readers de-emphasize any sort of "real story" and may doubt the existence of such a thing. In the interplay of allusions and thematic links, they find a multifaceted image of English literature, criticism, literary idolatry, politics, or some other topic.

Allusions and references

Like many of Nabokov's books, Pale Fire alludes to others. "Hurricane Lolita" is mentioned, and Pnin appears as a minor character. There are many resemblances to "Ultima Thule" and "Solus Rex", two short stories by Nabokov, which were to have been the first two chapters of a novel in Russian that he never continued. The placename Thule appears in Pale Fire, as does the phrase solus rex (a chess problem in which Black has no pieces but the king).

The book is also full of references to culture, nature, and literature. Some have been greatly emphasized by critics; others may be trifles. Many feel the book is more enjoyable if the reader deciphers or pursues these references independently. Template:MultiCol

• Bobolink
• Maud Bodkin
• The Brothers Karamazov
• Robert Browning, including "My Last Duchess" and Pippa Passes (inspired in a wood near Dulwich)
• Cedar, including a colloquial American meaning, juniper
• Ben Chapman (baseball). Some have said the newspaper headline "Red Sox Beat Yanks 5–4 On Chapman's Homer" was genuine and "nearthed by Nabokov in the stacks of the Cornell Library," but another has stated no such game occurred.
• Charles II of England
• Charles VI of France, known as Charles the Well-Beloved and Charles the Mad
• Disa (orchid) and the butterflies Erebia disa and E. embla (which may lead to Disa and Embla)
• T. S. Eliot and Four Quartets
• "Der Erlkönig"
• Thomas Flatman
• Edsel Ford (poet) and the poem "The Image of Desire"
• Forever Amber
• Robert Frost
• Oliver Goldsmith
• Gutnish language
• Thomas Hardy and the poem "Friends Beyond"
• Bret Harte and his character Colonel Starbottle
• Hebe and the poem "Vessenyaya Groza" ("Spring Thunderstorm") by Fyodor Tyutchev
• Sherlock Holmes and "The Adventure of the Empty House"
• A. E. Housman, including "To an Athlete Dying Young"
• In Memoriam A.H.H.
• Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

| class="col-break " |

• Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson and Hodge
• James Joyce
• Kalevala
• The Konungs skuggsjá or Royal Mirror
• Krummholz
• Jean de La Fontaine
• Franklin Knight Lane
• Lemniscate
• Angus McDiarmid or MacDiarmid, author of Striking and Picturesque Delineations...
• The Magi, including Balthasar and Melchior
• Novaya Zemlya
• Papilio nitra (now P. zelicaon nitra) and P. indra
• Parthenocissus
• Edgar Allan Poe and the poem "To One in Paradise" (for the phrase "Dim gulf")
• Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift
• Marcel Proust
• François Rabelais
• Red Admiral
• Alberto Santos-Dumont
• Walter Scott, including "Glenfilan, or, Lord Ronald's Coronach", The Lady of the Lake, and The Pirate
• Robert Southey
• Speyeria diana and S. atlantis
• Thormodus Torfaeus
• Waxwing
• Whites (butterfly)
• Word golf
• William Wordsworth, including the River Wye, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, including "Kubla Khan"
• Lev Yashin

Template:EndMultiCol

References

1. Boyd, Brian (2002). "Nabokov: A Centennial Toast". In Jane Grayson, Arnold McMillin, and Priscilla Meyer (eds.) (ed.). Nabokov's World. Volume 2: Reading Nabokov. Palgrave. p. 11. ISBN 0-333-96417-9. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
2. Wolf, Gary: The Curse of Xanadu Wired 3.06, June 1995. A 2009 paper also compares Pale Fire to hypertext: Volpone, Annalisa (2009). "'See the Web of the World': The (Hyper) Textual Plagiarism in Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Nabokov's Pale Fire" (pdf). Nabokov Online Journal, Volume III. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
3. McCaffery, Larry (1982). The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-8229-3462-0. Retrieved 2009-09-18.
4. Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction‎. Methuen & Co. pp. 15, 85. ISBN 0-416-32630-7. Retrieved 2009-09-18.
5. Chénetier, Marc (1996). Beyond Suspicion: New American Fiction Since 1960. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 74. Retrieved 2009-09-18.
6. Fowler, Alastair (1989). The History of English Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p. 372. ISBN 0-674-39664-2.
7. Nabokov, Vladimir (1973). Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 74. ISBN 0-679-72609-8 (Vintage reissue, 1990). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
8. Wood, Michael (1994). The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton University Press. p. 186. ISBN 0-691-00632-6. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
9. ^ Boyd, Brian (2001). Nabokov's "Pale Fire": The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08957-4.
10. ^ Dolbier, Maurice (June 17, 1962). "Books and Authors: Nabokov's Plums". The New York Herald Tribune. p. 5.
11. Grabes, Herbert (1995). "Nabokov and Shakespeare: The English Works". In Vladimir Alexandrov (ed.) (ed.). The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. Garland Publishing, Inc. pp. 509–510. ISBN 0-8153-0354-8. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help) See also references therein.
12. Page, Norman (ed.) (1982). Vladimir Nabokov: The Critical Heritage (1997 ed.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. p. 29. ISBN 0415159164. Retrieved 2008-01-19. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
13. ^ McCarthy, Mary (June 4, 1962). "A Bolt from the Blue". The New Republic. Retrieved 2009-04-24. Revised version in Mary McCarthy (2002). A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays. New York: The New York Review of Books. pp. 83–102. ISBN 1-59017-010-5. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
14. The quotation is "a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness… one of the very great works of art of this century".
15. ^ Macdonald, Dwight (Summer 1962). "Virtuosity Rewarded, or Dr. Kinbote's Revenge". Partisan Review: 437–442. Partially reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, pp. 137–140
16. Burgess, Anthony (November 15, 1962). "Nabokov Masquerade". Yorkshire Post. Partially reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, p. 143.
17. Chester, Alfred (November, 1962). "Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov". Commentary. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Reprinted in Chester, Alfred (1992). Looking for Genet: Literary Essays and Reviews. Black Sparrow Press. ISBN 0876858728. Quoted by Page, Critical Heritage, p. 29.
18. Steiner, George (July 7, 1962). "Review of Pale Fire". Reporter: 42, 44–45. Partially reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, p. 140.
19. Dennis, Nigel (November 11, 1962). "It's Hard to Name This Butterfly!". Sunday Telegraph. pp. p. 6. {{cite news}}: |pages= has extra text (help) Reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, pp. 142–143.
20. ^ Kermode, Frank (November 9, 1962). "Zemblances". New Statesman: 671–672. Reprinted in Page, Critical Heritage, pp. 144–148
21. Boyd, Brian (1991). Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 662.
22. Alter, Robert (1993). "Autobiography as Alchemy in Pale Fire". Cycnos. 10: 135–41.
23. Pifer, Ellen (1980). Nabokov and the Novel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 110–118.
24. ^ Boyd, Brian (1997). "Shade and Shape in Pale Fire". Nabokov Studies. 4. Retrieved 2006-09-26.
25. Field, Andrew (1967). Nabokov: His Life in Art. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 291–332.
26. Bader, Julia (1972). Crystal Land: Artifice in Nabokov's English Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 31–56.
27. Boyd, Brian (1991). Vladimir Nabokov: the American Years. Princeton University Press. pp. 425–456. ISBN 0-691-06797-X. Retrieved 2006-09-25.
28. Stegner, Page (1966). Escape into Aesthetics. New York: Dial.
29. ^ Kernan, Alvin B. (1982). The Imaginary Library: An Essay on Literature and Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Reprinted as "Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in Pale Fire" in Bloom, Harold (ed.) (1987). Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Chelsea House. pp. 101–126. ISBN 1-55546-279-0. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
30. McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-415-04513-4.
31. See also the archives of NABOKV-L for December 1997 and January 1998. That mailing list contains many discussions of Pale Fire.
32. Tammi, Pekka (1995). "Pale Fire". In Vladimir E. Alexandrov (ed.) (ed.). The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. Garland Publishing. pp. 571–585. ISBN 0815303548. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
33. Hornick, Neil (March 10, 2005). "Pale Fire and The Prisoner of Zenda". Retrieved 2008-01-19. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) An exchange from NABOKV-L.
34. Nabokov, Speak, Memory
35. ^ Meyer, Priscilla (1989). Find What the Sailor Has Hidden: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5206-2.
36. Appel, Alfred Jr. (ed.) (1991). The Annotated Lolita. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help) Appel's annotations to Lolita also address Pale Fire, and "in place of a note on the text", Appel reproduces the last two paragraphs of Kinbote's foreword, which discuss poetry and commentary.
37. Johnson, D. Barton (1985). Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis. ISBN 0-88233-908-7.
38. ^ Vintage edition of Pale Fire, rear cover copy, 1989
39. Boyd (1999) reviews the resemblances.
40. ^ de Vries, Gerard (1991). "Fanning the Poet's Fire: Some Remarks on Nabokov's Pale Fire". Russian Literature Triquarterly. 24: 239–267.
41. ^ Boyd, Brian (1996). "Notes". In Vladimir Nabokov; Brian Boyd, ed (ed.). Nabokov: Novels 1955–1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire. Library of America. ISBN 1883011191. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
42. Appel, Alfred, Jr. (1974). Nabokov's Dark Cinema. Oxford University Press. p. 30. ISBN 0195018346.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
43. Donahue, Michael (2004-10-31). "Chapman's Homer: Definitive Statement". Post to NABOKV-L.
44. ^ Roth, Matthew (2007). "Three Allusions in Pale Fire". The Nabokovian. 58: 53–60.
45. Dolinin, Alexander (1995-12-12). "Re: Library of America queries (fwd)". Post to NABOKV-L. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
46. Sisson, Jonathan B. (1995). "Nabokov and some Turn-of-the-Century English Writers". In Vladimir E. Alexandrov (ed.) (ed.). The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. Garland Publishing. p. 530. ISBN 0815303548. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
47. McDiarmid, Angus (1815). Striking and picturesque delineations of the grand, beautiful, wonderful, and interesting scenery around Loch-Earn. John Moir. Retrieved 2008-09-28.

External links

• Summary of a radio adaptation of Pale Fire broadcast in 2004 by BBC Radio 3
• Criticism (at Zembla, web site of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society). Contains a chronology of Pale Fire and many essays about it, along with other writing on Nabokov's works.
• Interactive Hypermedia Pale Fire likened to Bach fugue and butterfly

• Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2009
• 1962 novels
• American novels
• American poems
• Postmodern literature
• Novels by Vladimir Nabokov
• Metafictional works