/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18610473]

WTF did he mean by this??

[Anonymous No.18610766]

>>18610473
Im baffled trying to get to the heart of this. The more layers I discover, there seems to be a story built from the succesion of the layers themselves. Please post any findings or thoughts about any of these elements. Sorry if this is all previously discussed

>Regicide
So Kinbote means regicide and Kinbote taking over the poem and making it his own is like Gradus killing the king to owerthrow the royal reign, so in this alegory the king would be Shade and the kingdom, Pale Fire. this is all cool and closer to the surface
>Suicide
Not only does Hazel kill herself but Gradus kills himself and so Kinbote (because they're connected alegorically) is implied to have killed himself too. But Gradus and Kinbote's main roles are as killers, so their suicides also bring to mind their murder of Shade. There is evidence for Kinbote and Shade being the same person and Kinbote killing Shade in the process of killing himself. For example all of their literary opinions being quite similar (also quite similar to nab, which we'll get to) and the first lines of the poem, which I believe is the key to unlocking this whole thing

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane"

So this foreshadows that he would be killed by a reflection of himself. A false azure, or a resemblence/semblence (where Zembla comes from.) The suicide is further supported by the organization that sent Gradus being called the Shadows (ie Shades)

The two big differences among Kinbote and Shade (within the fiction of Kinbote) is that one is a chritstian while the other is an atheist, and one is gay while the other is straight. Kibote is painted as deluded and he escapes into his fantasies, while Shade writes about the truth of his life. Kinbote has a belief in the afterlife, which John ridicules while throwing shade (pun intended) at IPH. This makes me wonder if Kinbote is supposed to be the part of Shade that's so stricken with grief that he escapes into an alternate personality that believes in god and an afterlife, or at least a personality that doesnt know about Hazel. This would explain why Kinbote rarely wants to talk about her.
>Dissapointment
Kinbote's dissapointment that the poem isn't about his Zemblan stories is similar to Shade's dissapointment in seeing the role they cast Hazel as in the school play.
>The king's dreams
The king, while being gay, also has dreams where he is as in love with his wife Queen Disa, as Shade is in love with Sybil. And the kings dreams are his fictions, and the king is a fiction of Kinbote, and Kinbote may or may not be a fiction of Shade. So while the king dreams, its the fiction underneath all those layers of fictions trying to wake up to reality, where he is Shade who loves his wife Sybil. The king and Shade being connected according to the regicide allegory is evidence of this.

[Anonymous No.18610859]

>>18610766
It's not nearly that complicated. It's simple:
Professor Botkin at the University invented himself an altar ego, Charles Kinbote. Gradus, attempting to kill the judge, accidentally killed Shade, and Botkin, with his delusions, wrote the commentary, which is all lies. Simple as.

[Anonymous No.18610941]

>Ghosts
Ive suspected that Hazel haunts this book when the hauntings being "externalized psychic phenomena" was mentioned (something very similar is done in The Haunting of Hillhouse which I suspect nabby has read because he gave Shirley's lottery an A+) but I haven't discovered the signs of her hauntings or influence on the book. But ghosts tie in with the afterlife theme, also with the image of pale fire (smoke), as it can be viewed as the ghost of fire. The commentary can be viewed as the ghost of the poem, or at least the smoke after the fire is put out. The opposite is present in these lines where life is the commentary and the poem is the absolute to which the spirit returns to or is a part of

"Man's life as commentary to abstruse
Unfinished poem. Note for further use"

I have no idea as to what the ghost is trying to say in the Haunted Barn
>Corncobby Chronicles
Shade is mentioned to have recieved books by "Mr Faulkner" as a gift. The name "Pale Fire" is from a Shakespear play, like "The Sound and the Fury." How does this tie in considering that Faulkner "means nothing" to nab. And is there a connection between the Index of PF and the Appendix of TSATF
>All roads lead to Nabogod
So the real writer (of the commentary or both? both makes more sense to me) is Botkin, who is a "madman and a russian." So just like Quilty in Lolita and Nabokov in Pnin, Nabby inserts himself into the book and he is revealed to be behind everything. This brings back the suicide theme as he is both the killed and the killer of the book.

>>18610859
Thats just the plot though. What is the thematic shape of the whole thing? Also I think Botkin (nabby) made Gradus and Shade up, and Shade made up Kinbote.

[Anonymous No.18610990]

Another connection to Faulkner is that TSATF has Yoknapatawpha while PF has Zambla and both are fictional places. Was Nabby trying to prove that he could do those things better than Faulkner or does he secretly like him? Or is it just a very petty parody?

Also I just remembered the scene where Kinbote moves into the judge's house and makes it his own which foreshadows what he'll do to the poem.

[Anonymous No.18611035]

None of the above posters have ever had sex.

[Anonymous No.18611154]

>>18611035
Cool pic. I made the mistake of asking /lit/ to read, so I'll tie up my thoughts.
>Reflections
The poem is killed by its own reflection (the commentary) just like the waxwing in the opening lines. Afterlife becomes a reflection of life when you are a ghost, and the smoke when the fire is put out is similarly a reflection of fire. The moon reflects the "pale fire" of the sun. Fiction is a reflection of reality, and so on. Even the words Pale and Fire when you arrange them like reflections Pale eriF almost resemble each other, while conjuring up contrasting colors in your head.

[Anonymous No.18611230]

>>18610473
Structurally interesting, but that's it. Just a really square book.

[Anonymous No.18611237]

After Pale Fire, I'm almost convinced that Nab arranged for The Original of Laura to be released after his death under the guise that it was against his will and that he wanted it burnt

[Anonymous No.18611300]

Another thing for anons who read Pnin and Lolita.

Nab gives them a kind of afterlife by having them included in the book, which ties in to the ghost and afterlife thing.

>>18611230
So the story of Hazel, Kinbote's insanity, the adventures of the king and how it all came together didn't do it for you? I'm not even saying I don't understand. I'm kind of left feeling wierd and overwhelmed about it myself. But the connections keep coming.

[Anonymous No.18611643]

>Sudarg of Bokay
Oh god, the ice berg goes much deeper than I thought

[Anonymous No.18611722]

>>18610766
>>18610941
>>18611154
thank you for these posts anon

[Anonymous No.18612003]

O.O

I just thought of a Faulkner connection. I remember reading on /lit/ that he once went to Europe just to watch Joyce in a caffe. So a stalker/admirer that travels to another country just to see his idol at work? Very reminiscent of Kinbote if you ask me

>>18611722
Checked, thanks for reading. The more I dive in, the more I feel like I'm lost. Like what is the ghost trying to say here

>pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant
tal told

Is this an anagram? You can almost spell pale fire with the letters but an "I" is missing. Is that significant? People say its an anagram of "atalanta" which is apparently a butterfly that shows up before Shade's death. But read phonetically it reads

>pity to learn but not grow old with an answer till a far foreign land tale told

which is far more relevant. Another key thing I've read, is the hypothesis that Hazel, after her unsuccesful blind date, saw the moon in the sky, which looked like the circular white light ghost of Aunt Maude in the barn, so she followed it to the middle of the lake (suggesting that Maude invited her to the afterlife) and then drowned when the ice gave away (which would look like she crashed into her own reflection in the ice, similar to the waxwing) This is supported by the original use of "pale fire" in Shakespeare, where the metaphor is that the moon steals light, and in here it (or she, if its the spirit of Aunt Maude) steals the life of Hazel. Maybe it wasn't even a suicide, and she was just hypnotized by the moon. But this in turn might mean that Hazel's connection with Aunt Maude or the real nature of her death wasn't understood by Shade, which makes the misinterpreted poem be about a misinterpreted death

But my main issue is, if Botkin is Kinbote but not Shade, then the suicide themes kinda go to waste. But if Botkin is both, why is his name only connected with Kinbote? I haven't looked into solus rex so maybe that's where the solution lies.

[Anonymous No.18612188]

Book is so shit outside of the part of the poem used in Bladerunner.

Cant believe I was memed into reading this drivel.

[Anonymous No.18612198]

>>18610941
Nabokov told someone in a letter that he had a dream where Faulkner kissed Vera (Nab's wife). The plot thickens!

[Anonymous No.18612878]

>>18612188
tell me more anon...