Björn recenserade Pale fire av Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin twentieth-century classics)
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5 stjärnor
Right, so, Pale Fire it is then. The story of an escaped king, a murdered poet, or possibly neither.
Man's life as commentary to obstruse
Unfinished poem. Note for further use.
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
1. I put off reading this book for well over a year simply because I don't, as a rule, read poetry. Don't get me wrong: it's not a matter of principal... sorry, principle, but rather that I knew enough about what it was (an unreliable interpretation of a poem) to doubt my own ability to catch Kinbote in the act. I could catch Humbert because I knew the novel conventions he hid behind, the references he used to defend himself. Not being a fan of poetry, I thought I wouldn't …
Right, so, Pale Fire it is then. The story of an escaped king, a murdered poet, or possibly neither.
Man's life as commentary to obstruse
Unfinished poem. Note for further use.
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
1. I put off reading this book for well over a year simply because I don't, as a rule, read poetry. Don't get me wrong: it's not a matter of principal... sorry, principle, but rather that I knew enough about what it was (an unreliable interpretation of a poem) to doubt my own ability to catch Kinbote in the act. I could catch Humbert because I knew the novel conventions he hid behind, the references he used to defend himself. Not being a fan of poetry, I thought I wouldn't be able to do the same here. I'm not sure whether or not I was right.
2. From that perspective, I can't help but be somewhat underwhelmed by John Shade, if he exists. "Pale Fire" strikes me as a rather prosaic poem, the odd glimmer of beauty (that first stanza!) and/or meaning notwithstanding. This may or may not be the point.
3. Kinbote, if he exists, is a despicable but fun character. Part overzealous critic (scoffing at critics who draw far-reaching conclusions even as he maintains that another man's autobiography is his own in code), part psycho stalker, part complete mythomaniac.
4. Zembla, if it exists, is an impossibility; like a never-russified Novgorod ("new town"), the language an occasionally hilarious mixture of Scandinavian, German and Slavic. As Nabokov has Kinbote (or has Shade or Botkin have Kinbote) point out, the name indicates both "land" and "mirror"; it is, or it just resembles that which is. It's explicitly said to not be Novaya Zemlya; does that make it the not-new, the old world? There's that "Lolita as metaphor for the old world falling for the shininess of America" theory again. Which, of course, Nabokov scoffed at.
5. This, of course, runs through everything. Pale Fire is full of shadow images (is that Plato's blasted cave again?), fairground mirrors, opposites, dark halves, colours, flowers - obviously metaphorical and symbolical language that comes together in a way that emphasizes its own artifice. In other words, there are things that are too obvious, too deliberate, to be true.
6. Kinbote cannot be telling the truth; his story is too absurd, he knows too much about everyone. This much is true, at least within the novel (which of course in turn is a lie by Nabokov, the wealthy Russian who emigrated to the US and whose father was murdered by accident.) What's more, it's doubtful whether Kinbote knows he's not telling the truth - because he might not even exist. There are points in the text (starting on page one, that "very loud amusement park") which seem designed to call his authenticity into question; who would actually write that? How could someone as intelligent (if deranged) as he clearly is be as blind as the story requires him to be in order to not notice his own fictional status? Not only is his narration unreliable - the very existence of a narration is itself unreliable.
7. Likewise, Shade himself - for all the biographical information both Kinbote and Shade himself give us - is, in name and deed, a shadow (or Shadow). He only speaks in poetry and in sarcastic putdowns. His last poem starts, continues, and ends with his own death, following shortly after the poem is (un)finished. Does that seem right to you?
8. So Shade writes a poem, Kinbote writes the footnotes. Or Shade writes a poem and invents Kinbote to tell a different story in the footnotes. Or Nabokov invents Shade and Kinbote. Or... etc. The text is an interpretation of itself that itself demands to be interpreted while mocking those who would interpret it. There's endless permutations, not one of them is completely improbable, and the word is indeed "mindfuck".
9. And yet. And yet. I'd even go so far as to ask what significance the story itself has to anything if there's not one fixed point, not one opening where we can say "OK, THIS really happened, if perhaps not quite in this way; now, let's see what that implies for everything else he says." For all we know, everything here is Kinbote's invention. For all we know, none of it is. Without any "real" (within the fiction) basis, we haven't got a leg to stand on. We're just turning in ever-narrower circles around a novel that may or may not have a centre, chasing our own tale.
10. That's not a huge complaint, and perhaps it's even the point, but it does lead me to admire the book more than I love it. Pale Fire is an astounding work; it's so full of tricks, trompe l'œils, hidden passages, masks and question marks that I could re-read it right now and probably come to a completely different conclusion about everything in it. It's funny as hell. It constantly undercuts itself and forces the reader to re-evaluate his/her opinion of what's going on. And somewhere underneath, there's serious issues to address. But unlike Lolita, it never captivates me - at least not this time around. I can't give it less than five stars, though.