ITT: We figure Pale Fire out

[Anonymous No.18694645]

Let's solve this chess puzzle once and for all. Who is who, who wrote the sections, and what really happened, considering these clues about the "three main characters," K, G, and S:

>All three characters have the same birthday
>Gradus being sent by the Shadows, being a bad glass maker as opposed to Sudarg of Bokay (Jackob Gradus backwards, who is a master mirror maker), "I was the smudge of ASHEN fluff", Shade having "abundant gray hair", "my gray-haired friend", "you bad gray poet, you!" and whom Kinbote describes, at the moment he is shot at by Grey or de Grey, as "gray-locked", Shade having a name that can mean the same as Gradus's other alias, Degree?
>Kinbote being Botkin? The allusions to suicide, throughout the book and in Botkin's name, implying the main murder is a suicide? Nabokov says Botkin kills himself, but the only one who kills himself at the end for certain is Jack Grey.
>The king having dreams where he loves his wife Disa
>Kinbote being a mirror-inversion of Shade (exile rather than stay-at-home, lonely homosexual rather than happily married man, vegetarian rather than meat-eater, bearded rather than clean-shaven, left-rather than right handed, theistic rather than atheistic-at least in the debates)
>Kinbote and Shade having very similar opinions on literature, which are in turn, similar to Nabokov's
>Shade being epileptic like Odon's half brother Nodo (Odon backwards)

They seem to fall neatly into the image of a waxwing crashing into his own reflection if we take Kinbote as Shade's reflection and Gradus as the glass. But then where does that leave the connections between Gradus and Shade? There is a theory that Gradus is Shade's ghost in the commentary (which he influenced Kinbote to include in the commentary to make his death poetic and finish his unfinished poem in the afterlife) but where does that leave the connections between Shade and Kinbote? Where do they all leave the whole Botkin thing? What about Nodo and Shade? What does it all mean for the plot or themes? If they are all the same person, which one is it? Might it be Jack Grey in the asylum (like in Signs and Symbols, which would make all the references to him make sense, since the kid had referential mania)

And what about the Sound and the Fury connections?
>both books have a title from Shakespeare
>both segmented books with different narrators
>Index instead of Appendix
>Zembla instead of Yoknapatawpha
>"Mr. Faulkner's" books at Shade's doorstep

[Anonymous No.18694720]

Hopefully people did further research after the Lolita thread where we had the discussion. Now gimme theories

[Anonymous No.18694753]

>>18694645
good thread, more people need to get in here

[Anonymous No.18695351]

>>18694753
Thanku. Keep it bumped. Otherwise ill have to repost untill its solved

[Anonymous No.18695496]

I just thought the commentary was made up for Kinbote to make what was, within the context of the book, a boring poem more interesting.
Then again I'm pretty retarded so I'll bump the thread for people who actually know what they're talking about to figure it out.

[Anonymous No.18695868]

Bump. I believe in you /lit/

[Anonymous No.18696063]

>>18694645
Fuck you for making me actually pull this book off my shelf again because I know I'll just have to read it all over again. I'm looking at the notes and tabs I made when I last read it to see if I have anything to add.

First off, I read this book as halfway between a multilayered fantasy and a puzzle. It's obviously a puzzle with all the clues you've laid out, but it is not necessary that this puzzle was created to be solved. Nabokov was notably a big admirer of Joyce, who is recorded saying that part of his drive to write Ulysses was the knowledge that the language and references created a literary puzzle that could never be solved, ensuring that it would be discussed forever and affording the author a sort of immortality. I see this book as Nabokov's attempt to do the same. The book at times seems to be multiple people's fantasies: Shade's poem is a fantastic account of his own life, an impressionist memoir. Gradus' fantasy is that of continued revolution through the killing of Kinbote despite the fact that the Zemblan revolution has long since been won, Kinbote's fantasy is even more complex and indeterminate, reaching as far as him possibly inventing the other major characters of the play, and the fantasy we as readers play by pretending the book is anything more than text on a page. This last bit is best exemplified by the index preamble, which definitively lists the "main characters" of the book, pulling away the final veil that this could be anything more than a completely made up story.

Note in the index the circular referencing of the crown jewel's hiding place. This is a synecdoche of the whole book, where a mystery is laid that seems to promote cross-referencing but ultimately leaves us unsatisfied. Have to cook dinner now, I'll try to write more if I have a minute to come back.

[Anonymous No.18696142]

with incels interlinked

[Anonymous No.18696423]

>>18696063
>jewels
Arent they hidden in Kobaltana? I haven't looked too deeply into that but I'd be satisfied if we found a clean perfect loop too.
>https://www.cambridge.org/engage/api-gateway/coe/assets/orp/resource/item/5ef53baf042e630019ecbd5d/original/kobaltana-pale-fire-s-mystery-spot.pdf

What assures me that Pale Fire has a clean cut solution is how similar it is to The Vale Sisters and Signs and Symbols, and those both have nice satisfactory solutions. Unlike Lolita and Pnin, this is much much more puzzley, has ghosts, suicides, insanity, horror elements, clues, mysteries and ends on an unsatisfactory point like those two stories.

The characters are all fantasies, but we are trying to trace the lineage. Who made up who when it comes to the three? Is Jack Grey connected? Is either Shade or Kinbote a fantasy? It would at least be cleaner between only them but then how is Botkin involved? Maybe they're all fantasies of him. But then why is he only connected with Kinbote? Why is Gradus more heavily connected with Shade and not Kinbote? I guess his name does mean regicide, which connects him to Gradus. Maybe there's mirror reflection chain like

Nabokov>Botkin>Kinbote>Shade>Gradus>Xavier>Xavier in his dreams

So that every character is similar to the character two characters over (Nab=Shade=King in his dreams, all straight and love their wives) (Kinbote=King, okay) (Gradus=Botkin, madmen)

Okay the last bit was ridiculous, scratch that

>>18696142
I'm aware of how gay this is, but its also a great unsolved mystery

[Anonymous No.18696635]

>>18696423
I admit I'm pretty confused by the hierarchy you wrote, but as far as the jewels go I have no idea what the significance of what Nabokov has to say is; it's external to the novel so I'm not sure it makes sense to see it as a resolution to the mystery. There's nothing in the book itself that signals the jewels are in Kobaltana.

[Anonymous No.18696781]

>>18696635
Kobaltana is a mountain resort. Wasnt kinbote staying at one? Or didnt shade go there for a vacation?

[Anonymous No.18698482]

bump!

[Anonymous No.18698610]

Why dig deeper, when you can build more layer upon it?

[Anonymous No.18699312]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18699499]

Only I can get this thread going it seems. But I am myself not sure if anything more can come from the discussion we had last time, OP.

[z No.18701213]

i think the aussie(brian boyd) who wrote the book on Nabokov and pale fire had it solved. Basically the whole story is a gnostical fantasy. John shades poem is 100% by him and the poem documents his gnosis that there is more to existence than the merely physical and that art is the key to gnosis and achieving a higher form of being("A feeling of fantastically planned,
970 Richly rhymed life.
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.
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,") Shade comes to this realization from meeting the women who suffered a vision after almost dying as well and realizing the mistake she made( he saw a pale mountain, she, a pale fountain) was actually a confirmation of synchronicity within the universe, and that life fundamentally has a artistic spiritual structure. at the end it is basically revealed that shades daughter was correct and his aunt was an actually trying to warn her that she was going to die and turn into a Vanessa atalanta, a particular kind of butterfly and that he too will be resurrected but in his art. kinbote is merely a messenger. kinbote was basically shades /x/poster friend before his death and afterwards his spirit is trying to get kinbote to finish his work wile kinbote goes through his own gnosis through his fantasy of zembla and "rhyming" his own existence and art with shades work thus achieving gnosis with shade.

[Anonymous No.18701235]

>>18694645
Solving the chess riddle is the point.
Gradus is a poetic dictionary.
It's a parody of literary criticism.
The gay author is obsessed with Shade because he's a dumb faggot
Ta da.

[Anonymous No.18701801]

>>18696142
INTERLINKED

[Anonymous No.18701997]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18702438]

>>18699499
I can only hope that people look into it and meditate on the clues. I might just post this thread from time to time

>>18701213
The gnostic connection also makes sense when you consider that Nabakov is the demiurge in his novels which his characters are trying to escape from. But as I said, Boyd's theory doesnt account for the similarities between Kinbote and Shade (their birthdays, opinions, their mirror reflection qualities) and doesnt tie in the Botkin thing very well. Also its wierd that Shade reaches a spiritual conclusion at the end of the poem, and yet Kinbote portrays him as an atheist when he is giving an account of their debates on god.

>>18701235
k

[Anonymous No.18703330]

bump

[Anonymous No.18703486]

>>18694645
Bump, I’ll write on this tomorrow when I’m not drunk.