Folio Books: Review of Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Pale Fire

by Vladimir Nabokov

Vintage, 315 pp.

There is a small but disproportionately delightful literary sub-genre consisting of fictional works of scholarship. To this category belong many of Jorge Luis Borges's stories, possibly A.S. Byatt's Possession, and certainly Vladimir Nabokov's tour de force Pale Fire.

Pale Fire is the name of a 999-line poem in four cantos by the distinguished American poet John Shade, published posthumously in a lovingly prepared edition with a foreword and detailed commentary by the Zemblan literary scholar Charles Kinbote. Pale Fire is also the name of the novel by Nabokov in which the poem is written by Shade and annotated by Kinbote, who are Nabokov's creations. The novel is actually written in the form of poem and scholarly apparatus, not omitting a thorough index. It is a perfect and perfectly original union of form and meaning. It is also terribly funny.

The poem itself is a complicated, beautiful, mysterious achievement. It reveals the character of John Shade so completely and movingly that I had to keep reminding myself it was actually written by Nabokov himself. The poem is the heart of the novel, literally and figuratively, but I suspect it could stand on its own removed from the rest of the text. Pale Fire is Shade's final work; possibly his greatest work. It is the product of every thought and experience in a long, thoughful life, and it also contains that entire life: childhood, adolescence, marriage, fatherhood, age and death. The title refers to the 'pale fire of time,' and is taken from a poem by Yeats ('A Poet to His Beloved') -- not, as Kinbote confidently suggests, from Shakespeare. (But see note below.)

And Kinbote is frequently wrong in his confident suggestions in the commentary. He identifies allusions where none exist; fails to recognise those that are actually there (he is writing his notes in a remote cabin in the Rockies and complains that he has no books to check his references), and suggests interpretations which are clearly, hilariously, wrong. For the hapless Dr Kinbote has got it into his head that Pale Fire (the poem) is really about himself, and his commentary is an audacious attempt to demonstrate this.

So, almost ignoring what is actually present in the poem, he proceeds through the commentary to give a detailed history of his life and times, often revealing far more than he really means to. And it turns out to be quite a good story, because Kinbote, a native of the remote northern European country of Zembla, has had quite an adventurous past. It is only a pity that it is quite irrelevant to Shade's poem. And Kinbote doesn't do anything by halves; even the most innocuous phrase of the poem is 'demonstrated' to be a cryptic reference to some event of Kinbote's life. It is great fun.

But Pale Fire is not merely amusing and inventive. (Could Nabokov write a novel that was merely amusing and inventive?) Kinbote's commentary seems to be everything literary criticism should not be; but it is actually only an extreme, exaggerated version of what literary criticism truly is. Kinbote attempts to rewrite Shade's poem in his own image and likeness, but this is true to a greater or lesser extent -- or a more or less subtle extent -- of every critic. This includes not only professional critics like Kinbote, but ordinary readers like you and me. It is implied in the very act of criticism and interpretation -- in the very act of reading. And even as I write this I cannot deny that my own reading of this novel is the product of all of my personal experiences with literature.

Pale Fire is thus a complex, and ultimately rather touching, demonstration of the way people have of reading their lives into books and reading books into their lives, like Kinbote. (And also, the way we have of writing our lives into books and writing books into our lives, like Shade.) It is an affirmation of the power of literature, of the power of books to help us make sense of our lives, and of the impossibility of distinguishing precisely between life and art. To quote John Shade:

I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line.
Pale Fire, 970-976.

Before you dismiss me, reader, I ask that you recall that particular novel or poem or play read in childhood or adolescence or even middle or old age, which seemed to have been written for no one but you, which you took so personally, which changed the way you thought about your life, or about life generally, which even now you cannot hope to discuss with impartiality or even think of without growing deeply emotional -- deeply happy, deeply sad, deeply angry. Every passionate reader knows such a book, or several such books. And spare a sympathetic thought for poor Dr Kinbote even as you chuckle at his blissfully-made mistakes.

N.L., 15 December, 1997 , modified 31 January, 1998

Note: Speaking of confident suggestions . . . I have fallen into Nabokov's trap! By luck M.A. stumbled upon the line from Yeats (my favourite poet), and I had so little faith in Kinbote that I assumed his reference to Shakespeare was wrong. I didn't follow the clues and check Timon of Athens, which Kinbote alludes to more than once. Well, now I have, following an interesting e-mail from a reader -- and there it is, act 4, scene 3, lines 438-440.

So the joke's on me, perhaps. Did Nabokov himself know the poem by Yeats? Is the reference deliberate or accidental? I'm not sure now. Even if it is sheer coincidence, though, I think it does throw much light on the poem, on the book, and even on the hazardous process of literary criticism which Nabokov is making fun of -- and at the same time forcing us to get involved in.

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