/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7001293]

Can we trust anything Charles Kinbote tells us in this book? If we assume that in the universe of Pale Fire Zembla does not exist then how is it possible that Kinbote is able to have discussions about Zembla with his peers at the school.

And also John Shade seemed to recognize that Kinbote was the last Zemblan king, but that could've all been delusional lying by Kinbote because he is the only narrator we receive. I feel like I need to read the whole book again to try to piece together the real reality in the novel.

[Anonymous No.7001324]

>>7001293
Nabokov confirmed that Kinbote was really a crazy Russian professor named Botkin who's mentioned a couple of times.

Zembla and all the "history" related to it are completely made up by Botkin and "Vinogradus" is just some homeless drifter.

[Anonymous No.7001381]

>>7001293
Kinbote is botkin the nutty professor. Shades wife refers to him as "botfly" in the index. It is alluded to a few times. Kinbote/botkin is the only perspective we get throughout the novel, when you read the text with that information, you can begin to see that nobody really engages kinbote/botkine, and whenever they do, he tries to constantly change the subject toward his own narrative.

Botkin is a deluded professor whose function within the text is for Nabokov to poke fun at academia and the way the people who inhibit it project their own biased narratives onto seemingly unrelated material. It's a satire on the bubble these people live in. The fact that new wye and zembla don't exist reinforces the point that they are living in their own imaginary world.

The guy gradus or whatever is actually jack grey or something: a convict who wants to kill the judge whose house kinbote/botkin is sitting. He mentions the judge looks like shade more than once I think hence why shade gets shot: he looks like him. Kinbote/botkine mentions in the text somewhere about how people must want to extract revenge on those who lock them up

Zembla is most likely made up, but so is everything else in the novel to draw attention to the fact that you are reading a piece of fiction with no real inherent meaning other than what you arbitrarily place on it. Just like the dysfunctional, deluded narrator.