Information about Pale Fire

Pale Fire

First US edition of Pale Fire
Author	Vladimir Nabokov
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Literary
Publisher	G. P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	1962 (corrected edition first published by Vintage International, 1989)
Pages	315
ISBN	ISBN 0-679-72342-0 (Vintage)

Pale Fire (1962) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, his fourteenth and his fifth written in English. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel".^[1] It has drawn a great deal of critical attention, with commentators offering a wide variety of interpretations. In the 1980s, after Nabokov was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union, the novel was translated into Russian by his wife Véra, its dedicatee. ^[2]

Plot summary

At first glance, Pale Fire is the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by a famous American poet, John Shade. The poem digressively describes many aspects of Shade's life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of the apparent otherworldly. Canto 2 is about his family and the 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 personal details on Shade's daily life and creative process, as well as some thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe.

The poem appears with a Foreword, extensive Commentary, and Index by Shade's self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote, Shade's neighbor in the small college town of New Wye. According to Kinbote, Shade has been murdered. Kinbote takes it upon himself to oversee the poem's publication, telling readers that it lacks only one line.

In the Foreword, Commentary and Index, Kinbote explicates the poem surprisingly little. Instead, he tells his own story, notably including his friendship with Shade, and the story of Charles Xavier Vseslav, aka Charles II, "The Beloved," the deposed king of the "distant northern land" of Zembla who picturesquely escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries. Yet no chronicle of Charles's intricate adventure -- indeed, no comprehensible reference to him whatsoever -- is to be found in Shade's poem, although Kinbote repeatedly claims in the Commentary that possible allusions to Charles, and to Zembla, abound in the text.

The reader soon realizes that Kinbote himself is Charles Xavier, living incognito—or perhaps, though he builds an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language, that he is insane and that his identification with Charles and perhaps all of Zembla are his delusions. A third story told by Kinbote in his Commentary is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles.

The narrative of the novel fuses with Kinbote's critical apparatus, especially his Commentary, which takes the form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem and is full of complex cross-references, many of which convey essential plot information. By means of this device, the book's Foreword, and an alphabetically arranged Index, Kinbote narrates his stories in a highly nonlinear way. The book has been cited by Ted Nelson as an archetypal proto-hypertext.

Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book.^[3] The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don't have to pay attention to it,"^[4] but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote's suicide.^[5] One of Kinbote's notations 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,^[6] 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 doesn't recognize it, as he says he has only a Zemblan version of the play, and in a separate note even rails against the common authorial practice of using phrases from other books 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).^[7]

Interpretations

Some readers concentrate on the apparent story, focusing on traditional aspects of fiction such as the relationship among the characters.^[8][9] 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^[10] 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 Hazel's ghost induced Kinbote to say things to Shade that inspired Shade's poem.^[5]

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,^[10] Andrew Field invented the Shadean theory^[11] and Julia Bader expanded it;^[12] Boyd himself espoused the theory for a time.^[13] "Kinboteans", a decidedly smaller group, believe that Kinbote invented the existence of John Shade. Boyd^[10] credits the Kinbotean theory to Page Stegner^[14] 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).^{[15] [16] [17]}

Though a minority of commentators believe 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,^[18] and the central murder has resemblances (emphasized by Priscilla Meyer^[19]) to Nabokov's father's murder by an assassin who was trying to kill someone else.

Some readers, starting with Mary McCarthy^[20] and including Boyd, Nabokov's annotator Alfred Appel,^[21] and D. Barton Johnson,^[22] 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."^[6] The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references is apparent here. 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. 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,^[19] criticism,^[15] literary idolatry,^[23] politics,^[23] 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.

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.

External links

• Summary of a radio adaptation of Pale Fire broadcast in 2004 by BBC Radio 3
• Nabokov Library - Pale Fire and other works by Nabokov
• For Nabokovians at Zembla. Clicking on "Criticism" will reach a page with a chronology of Pale Fire and many essays about it, along with other writing on Nabokov's works.

References

•  • [ e] The works of Vladimir Nabokov
Novels :	Mary • King, Queen, Knave • The Defense • The Eye • Glory • Laughter in the Dark • Despair • Invitation to a Beheading • The Gift • The Enchanter • The Real Life of Sebastian Knight • Bend Sinister • Lolita • Pnin • Pale Fire • • Transparent Things • Look at the Harlequins! • The Original of Laura
Short stories :	The Wood-Sprite • Russian Spoken Here • Sounds • Wingstroke • Gods • A Matter of Chance • The Seaport • Revenge • Beneficence • Details of a Sunset • The Thunderstorm • La Veneziana • Bachmann • The Dragon • Christmas • A Letter That Never Reached Russia • The Fight • The Return of Chorb • A Guide to Berlin • A Nursery Tale • Terror • Razor • The Passenger • The Doorbell • An Affair of Honor • The Christmas Story • The Potato Elf • The Aurelian • A Dashing Fellow • A Bad Day • The Visit to the Museum • A Busy Man • Terra Incognita • The Reunion • Lips to Lips • Orache • Music • Perfection • The Admiralty Spire • The Leonardo • In Memory of L. I. Shigaev • The Circle • A Russian Beauty • Breaking the News • Torpid Smoke • Recruiting • A Slice of Life • Spring in Fialta • Cloud, Castle, Lake • Tyrants Destroyed • Lik • Vasiliy Shishkov • Ultima Thule • Solus Rex • Mademoiselle O • The Assistant Producer • "That in Aleppo Once..." • A Forgotten Poet • Time and Ebb • Conversation Piece, 1945 • Signs and Symbols • First Love • Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster • The Vane Sisters • Lance • Easter Rain
Drama :	Death • The Grandfather • The North Pole • The Tragedy of Mr. Morn • The Man from the USSR • The Event • The Waltz Invention
Non-fiction :	Speak, Memory • Strong Opinions • Nikolai Gogol • Lectures on Literature • Lectures on Russian Literature • Lectures on Don Quixote • The Nabokov-Wilson letters • Selected Letters, 1940-1977
Miscellaneous :	Poems and Problems • Lolita: A Screenplay • The Annotated Lolita • Carrousel