The Perfect Chess Game by Way of Anabasis
In Vladimir Nabokov's
Solus Rex & Pale Fire
Michael J. Scheibel
Introduction: The Start of it All
Nabokov has a peculiar writing style that transcends through history by way of discovery. There is an eerie representation of himself throughout the work and in a deceiving way discloses the meaning to it all. Only a true monotonous detective can begin to read Pale Fire as Nabokov would have wanted. A good reader can look past amusing ploys for entertainment purpose, and contemplate the minute details hidden throughout the novel. In order to find meaning in the detail a good reader must follow a certain structure for reading. The purpose of Charles Kinbote as the commentator in the novel is to provide a structure for the gifted reader to follow. The book Pale Fire through the eyes of Kinbote is a chess game being played out. It is important to remember that this is no ordinary book and Nabokov will not surrender the answers at the end like another author may do. He has wrote the steps out for us (Kinbotes way of reading), the reader, so we may discover something new for ourselves. All the games in Pale Fire are ended in draws as Nabokov would have wanted, it is not the purpose to win the chess game but to find a destination that will lead to another chess match by way of a draw. I think that to lose the game, is to except defeat or believe what we think to be real, as in Plato's cave. I also think that to win is to know everything and that to do so would give no reason to live. The perfect chess game is one that never ends or always ends in a draw. It is the readers objective to play the chess game correctly by way of Anabasis which is “ an expedition from coastline up into the interior of a country” (Wikipedia). This is the strategy in chess of keeping your king in the middle of the chess board when a player only has the lone king or Solus Rex. Anabasis is the strategy laid out by Kinbote (Nabokov) to connecting the poem to Zembla, real to the unreal, or turning a loss into a draw. If a reader strictly follows this strategy they will not be deceived and will be able to find the answers they seek (Crown Jewels). The Eystein style of painting is the key to it all and the goal of anabasis.
Solus Rex a Short Story
In order to see the future or make a move on the chess board as the lone Solus Rex we must first look at the whole picture. In a chess game there is a link of moves made by two opponents.Neither player can know what the other is going to do next, (they can try to guess through previous actions what the other may do but not know) so the future of where the chain is going to lead can not be know by either. The third party provides another view on the game. They simply see the chess game in a non-subjective way which helps them to better analyse the game. The players in a way are victims to the game and have to react to the others moves. In that way there is a relatedness between the two players. In a draw they will both reach the same destination at the end of the game. Connecting both players through a game of love and loss.
A draw is the perfect chess game because it brings two opponents or opposing people together. In Solus Rex there is a passage that explains the ideal chess game. “We, the slaves of linked events, endeavor to close the gap with a spectral ring in the chain. As we look back, we feel certain that the road we see behind us is the very one that has brought us to the tomb of the fountainhead near which we find ourselves” ( Solus Rex). The two players are slaves to the game or linked events. In chess they start at opposite sides of the board and slowly move towards each other through a chain of moves. As the two players look back at the past moves they can understand better how they ended the game in a draw in the first place. In this game both players are trying to find the same answer (just like in an actual game where both try to checkmate the other). The answer they are trying to find is the question of where we go when we die. The fountainhead represents a supernatural world that connects to the real world through a tomb. This correlates with the “White Fountain” in Pale Fire that starts with line 698-
I can't tell you how I knew – but I did know that I had crossed the border. Everything I loved was lost but no aorta could report regret. A sun of rubber was convulsed and set; Asystem of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem. And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
This is the same passage (worded differently) but in two different novels by Nabokov. But in Pale Fire we read on and find that John Shade thought the fountain to have a powerful supernatural signification. Now with that said I do not believe that Nabokov's intentions were to demonstrate the parallels of heaven, hell and earth. But there is an imaginary supernatural world that is intertwined in the poem of the real. There is death but there is also hints in Pale Fire to explain a sort of escape from death by playing the chess game laid out for the perfect reader.
Nabokov has a more Platonic view of reality than a religious one. This is clearly stated in Solus Rex where there is a connection between the two ideas.
Life's erratic leaps and lapses can be endured by the mind only when signs of resilience and quagginess are discoverable in anterior events. Such, incidentally, were the thoughts that occurred to the no longer independent artist Dmitri Nikolaevich Sineusov, and evening had come, and in vertically arranged ruby letters glowed the word RENAULT ( Solus Rex).
If we read on we find that Sineusov is a famous artist of the native land and is similar to Shade in Pale Fire and his search for the imagined “outside world” (Barabtarlo). Renault, I believe stands for Mary Renault a South African writer who writes about Alexander the Great and World War II. Some of her themes have to do with homosexuality, misinterpretation of pederasts and the ideals of Plato's “Phaedrus & Symposium.” All the themes have a presence in Nabokov's works but is the connection with Plato and his ideas about love and reincarnation (Metempsychosis) in “Phaedrus & Symposium” that has the most similarity between the two writers. Through love we are able to reincarnate or transform ourselves. Mary McCarthy believed that “love is the burden of Pale Fire, love and loss” (McCarthy). As she described it love is a union or how Plato described it, “the pining for the other half of a once-whole body, the straining of the soul's black horse to unite with the white.” Pale Fire is a chess game of love between the white pieces and black and in the short story Solus Rex, it comes down to a lone black king facing a loss to the opponent. The lone black king must escape but in the end he (who is K or the king) is tricked by a nightmarish sensation and must be helped by a third party to escape. Solus Rex is the lone black king that must escape. Escape can only be achieved through transformation of the board itself or as McCarthy states
The sense of loss in love, of separation (the room beyond, projected onto the snow, the phantom moves of the chess knight, the deviate piece, off the board's edge onto ghostly squares), binds mortal men in a common pattern – the elderly couple watching TV in a lighted room, and the “queer” neighbor watching them from his window. But it is most poignant in the outsider: the homely daughter stood up by her date, the refugee, the “queen,” the bird smashed on the window pane.
In a perfect chess game everything or the whole picture is part of the chess game itself. All players and pieces are involved in the game either dead or alive, real or not real, part of the board or off the board.This makes me think that this game is not played on an ordinary chess board. The escape of the Solus Rex is played on a window pane type chess board. There is a connection between the two players (the writer and the reader) and the pieces (the characters of the story). I see multiple chess boards being played at once. I imagine use the reader looking at a chess board on a window pane (on a dark night so we can not see through the window but see a reflection of the inside instead). I imagine us seeing Shade and Kinbote as opposites playing each other in chess, and the pieces being symbols or characters of each others lives, and the kings being themselves. On the other side of the windowpane there is Nabokov himself controlling the chess pieces we the reader see's, as if they are magnetically connected from both sides. The reader is thrown into the chess game as the lone black king to play out the rest of the game as Kinbote (K) had done. The goal of the game is to end in a draw or find a union between to opposites (Shade and Kinbote), and ultimately be able to see through the windowpane to the other side. I compared the chess game in Pale Fire to the final chess game in Nabokov's other work “The Defense.” If we think of Nabokov as sacrificing himself before the end of the game like Luzhin did in “The Defense” then we can say this is the last chess game. Nabokov has the final moves writen out for the game to be finished like Luzhin did. And also like Luzhin, Nabokov knows how the game will be played out by both sides. But instead of having the wife Sybil Shade (or Luxhins wife) just tell us the final moves to finish the game, Nabokov puts us the reader in the game as the Solus Rex to turn it into a draw. In order for a game to end in a draw the Solus Rex must make fifty moves without being checkmated. If we the reader to follow Kinbotes path of the Solus Rex to end the game in a draw. Then and only then can we be united with Nabokov and begin to understand the complexities of his writing the book Pale Fire.
Pale Fire or Solus Rex
The nine hundred and ninety nine line poem title Pale Fire is not a perfect poem. Kinbote says that the title of the poem should have been called Solus Rex. Nabokov himself said he planed to write a book very similar to Pale Fire with the name Solus Rex. But somewhere along the lines of Nabokov's life he never finished Solus Rex and wrote Pale Fire instead. Kinbote wanted the name to be changed to Solus Rex so it could connect better to his life in Zembla, and also him being the lone black king and his thrilling escape from Zembla. The only problem with the title is that Kinbote was not the author of the poem but John Shade. Solus Rex very well could have been a suitable name for the poem only if Kinbote and Shade where the same person or if maybe one was a shadow (shade) of the other. This would mean that the poem really was connected to Zembla. I believe that Nabokov is these two authors together and that they are reflections of Nabokov. But at the same time they are completely different reflections and are guides for us the reader to follow. I also believe that Solus Rex is a perfect title for the poem if this were the case. I think that Nabokov new this. He also know that nothing is perfect or if it is then there must be a mistake made to balance out the perfection. The poem is not perfect because the poem is not complete. It is missing the last line to tie the whole thing together (to unite the real world with the imagined in infinity).
Shades poem is only the start, it must take Kinbote to finish out the poem through his commentary (Zemblan magic). Pale Fire is not just a poem but a novel. I believe that Kinbote is an example for us the reader to follow. At the end of the book Kinbote states “I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched coutrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead” (Nabokov. Pale Fire). After this Nabokov slips through in the commentarty to finish the last words, suggesting that Kinbote had acctually finished right there and then and maybe commited suicide. But if that were the case it does not mean that the work itself is complete. We are suppose to be Kinbote or a replacement for him as the longe black king on the chess board to end the game in a draw and immortalize the novel.
The title Pale Fire which was stolen from Shakspears “Timon of Athens” is a suitable title. It explains everything just as Solus Rex does as long as the reader knows where to look. If we go back to one of the main themes for the poem, the search for the afterlife, then we see that Nabokov is asking us what we will do after his life. This passage at the end of the Pale Fire reveals Nabokov as the writer and ask us (Kinbote or his replacement) to keep searching for answers after he is gone.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countryman. My work is finished. My poet is dead. “And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor king, poor Kinbote?” a gentle young voice may inquire.
I believe that the gentle young voice is Hazel from the grave. Hazel is hardly mentioned in Kinbotes commentary but I believe that Nabokov uses her as a ghostly guide for Kinbote and us the reader. She is the third perspective of the chess game from the audience. I also believe that she is the same person or atleast role in the novel as Sybil Shade. They are the mistake, the deviate. She or they are the balancing piece that brings together the two opposites (Kinbote and John Shade). The goal of Hazel is to insure the draw by being the guide. And the point of a draw is to immortalize this novel which demonstrates the imaginative supernatural world. It may seem from this small passage that the writer is Kinbote but with reading on we can tell that it is unmistakenly Nabokov who is talking to us in these last pages.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disquises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art.
In this passage he reveals himself as all the characters but also as a simple man. He can rid himself of all the real as long as there is art. Art is the supernatural and the real contained into one. Art holds the secret to the afterlife. Nabokov has finished what he himself can do and it is our turn to use this work to understand the mysteries of the afterlife for ouselves. The path is a long and tedious one but it is one that each and everyone of us must take ouselves. I am not sure if Nabokov knows the secret to the infinite afterlife, or if the secret can be possibly obtained, but I feel the novel has the path to finding it. We must take the trip because it will lead to a more satisfying deeper life filled with love and passion. We must challenge ourselves and the real world.
Nabokov Lets Us Steal From Him
The reason Pale Fire is a good substitute for Solus Rex is found by searching the origin of the title in the passage in Timon of Athens.
“The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction/ Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant theif/ And her pale fire she snatches from the sun...” (Wikipedia).
Nabokov is the Sun that draws his information from the vast sea of knowledge. He has spent his life gathering up information form research and has combined it beautifully into one piece of art. We the reader (that resemble Kinbote in a way), are the moon that steals the suns pale fire from them. We are both theifs of knowledge and have the same goal to reach the end of the chess match. But what differs from Nabokov and ourselves is that he knows the moves while we have yet to learn all of them. And also because Nabokov is a theif himself he is ok with the fact that we are stealing from him. Infact he in a way acctually gives us his lifetime knowledge. Like Timon he is a very generous man but unlike Timon he gives an everlasting gift and gives it to us with out resenfulness or remorse. But as I have stated before we as the reader must follow the rules he lays out for us. Nabokov loves the reader who follows the chess game of Kinbote, also the gift will not be as great if we do not do so.
There are two reasons for Nabokov's gift. The first is layed out in Mary McCarthy's essay which states - “Nabokob's tenderness for human eccentricity, for the freak, the “deviate,” is partly the naturalist's taste for the curious. But his fond, wry compassion for the lone black piece on the board goes deeper than classificatory science or the collector's choplicking” (McCarthy). The common reader is one that will not take the time to follow Nabokov's rules. It takes and elite reader, the deviate or freak of society with a curious disposistion to read the book as Kinbote would like us to. It is this detailded reader that Nabokov has an admiration that goes beyond the general classification of compassion. He give us this gift of Pale Fire because he knows that we can handle it. The second reason for Nabokovs gift is layed out in a passage from another one of his books Speak Memory -
All of a sudden, I felt that with the completion of my chess problem a whole period of my life had come to a satisfactory close. Everything around was very quiet; faintly dimpled, as it were, by the quality of my relief. Sleeping in the next room were you and our child. The lamp on my table was bonneted with blue sugarloaf paper (an amusing military precaustion) and the resulting light lent a lunar tinge to the voluted air heavy with tabacco smoke. Opaque curtains separated me from blacked-out Paris. The headline of a newspaper drooping from the seat of a chair spoke of Hitler's striking at the Low Countries....However, it is only now, many years later, that the information concealed in my chess symbols, which that control permitted to pass, may be and in fact is, divulged (Nabokov. Speak Memory).
This period was Nabokov's epiphany much like Phineus Nanson in “The Biographers Tale.” Like writing was a passion of Nanson, chess was a passion of Nabokov's. He lived through an unfortunate time in his life and I believe he found some sort of information to end that destructive war through his obsession. Just as the opaque curtains seperated him from the rest of Paris, it is the Hazel windowpane that seperates the two authors. In life sometimes we have to seperate ourselves from the real world problems to find a solution. I think that the creation of Zembla is the seperation and its purpose is a path to understanding the real. An imaginary world with exiled kings and romance is easier to understand then the real world. But inside the story of Zembla there are hidden truths and similarities with the world of Apalachia. Kinbote is the only one that can see the similarities, even if it seems like he is reading into the poem. That is why I think he turned that information into an endless gift. So that we as a good reader and citizen can take what we learn from this gift and use it for a good cause or so history does not repeat itself.
As a good reader and a good chess player it is our job to look at history so we can make decsisions for the future. In chess, knowing all of you opponents past moves will lead to you predicting their next moves. But it is not as easy as just knowing the opponents past moves when playing with Nabokov, he is to good of a chess player for that. Nabokov uses trickery to hide some of his moves, we may think that he plays a certain move or write a passage for a given purpose. But when we read on we are confussed by his move and realize that it did not have the same intention as we first thought. We must be as smart as Nabokov and stop thinking about how he would play us and start thinking about how we can start to play more like Nabokov. We have to start reading into things like Kinbote reads into Shade's poem. We can not allow ourselves to be decieved by Nabokov. The closer we can get to knowing about Nabokov and all the knowledge he has obtained (which is vast), the closer we can get to being competitiors with him. Nabokov even though may seem like he dislikes other claimed brillian minds, it is only because he is a very competative person. Nabokov wants a relationship with us, he in a way wants to transform us into a reader much like himself. This is just like how he wants to transform his work into a piece of art through our help. His gift is not ordanary gift. His gift is in some way a challenge or chess match for us the reader. He wants us to play him in the ultimate game which will eventually transform us into elite readers on a greater level. With everytime we read this novel as Kinbote would we learn more and step up one more notch in the ladder. Nabokov's gift is the gift of knowledge which leads to understanding. The gift is an infinity of knowledge but through structure we can come to a finite or understanding of art.
The Way of Anabasis
Nothing in the world of Nabokov is easy. His life described in “Nabokov's Blues” is one of tremeandus feats. The challenges he faces in the name of science are incredible but in his mind there is no question they are necessary. His mindset on chess is the same. For him it is the best part of chess when you are the lone king and have to make fifty right moves to turn a loss into a draw. For him it seems like the work itself or the game of chess is so much more preacious then the result. If a game could last forever then it would be more preferred than not. It is also important to look at the protagonist as being from the place of hopelessness and close to giving up. It is important for us the reader to imagine ourselves in a posistion where we lose the most loved thing next to us (in the case of chess, the queen). Once we can imagine or have experienced then it becomes clear that it is essential to make those fifty moves, even when there is not chance of winning, because it is the artistic beauty of making those last moves that is the reason. In “Speak Memory” Nabokov tries to connect is love of chess with life, it is stated –
Having passed through this “antithetic” inferno the by now ultrasophisticated solver would reach the simple key move (bishop to c2) as somebody on a wild goose chase might go from Albany to New York by way of Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores. The pleasant experience of the roundabout route (strange landscapes, gongs, tigers, exotic customs, the thrice-repeated circuit of a newly married couple around the sacred fire of an earthen brazier) would amply reward him for the misery of the deceit, and after that, his arrival at the simple key move would provide him with a synthesis of poignant artistic delight.
First of all the windowpane chess board and the opposite relationship between the characters in Pale Fire or the reader and Nabokov are similar to a inferno gate that splits opposite worlds. This is kind of the idea of transformation into an opposite entity to reach a simple solution like bishop to c2. I looked up that move on wikipediea and found that it was originally a defensive move of Pedro Damiano who is a Portugues author of the worlds oldest chess novel “Questo Libro.” The move was apart of the most popular defense of the 19th centuray called the “Two Knights Defense” which relates to the Solus Rex vs. a king and two knights will always end in a draw. The “Two Knights Defense” usually ends in a draw if the opponent knows what is going on. The series of moves that ends in bishop to c2 usually takes a long time and is not easy to do. The black player (player that goes second in chess) usually has to lose a lot of key players to make it work.
The point of it that I believe Nabokov is trying to get at is that the harder the strategy or process the more satifying and artistically beautiful it will be when finished. And to him it seems that a game full of deciet and trickery is one of the most fun to be apart of. It is not the quick match or trip that brings the most enjoyment but the long trip that does. Going from Albany to New York is a very short trip if done in a strait line. But when you add detours to it you experience strange, fun and new things from your surroundings (or in chess new moves from your opponent). All three of the places Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores all have a conection to the great northern land of Zembla. Zembla represents a new and exiting place to escape to or in Kinbotes case from. I think that Nabokov believes that when a game between two talented players (especially those that are complete opposites) ends in a draw is the most beautiful game and should be satisfying for both players. This is because it confirms that both are worthy and both are on the same page and that the next contest will be even better. In the world of liturature and this novel it is when the reader and writer make this connection that it will become a thing of art and will become immortal.
The main point to anabasis is the trip itself. Every little thing that happens in the trip is valuable to the trip as a whole. To understand the whole book we must remember every detail. We as the reader can not know everthing that is contained in this novel, so it is the endless trip to find out about all the little secrets hidden withing the walls of this novel. We have to read the novel just like Nabokov would have wrote it which was stated in “Nabokov's Blues” – “Both necessitate an attention to details and a recognition of how those details fit into larger overall patterns (“In high art and pure science detail is everything.”). When he says high art and pure science, I think he is referring to that which take extreme concentration and attention to detail. Nabokov is also quoted in this book saying “I think that in a work of art there is a kind of merging between the two things, between the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science” (Coats). These two things don't seem to fit with the normal affiliations, usually poetry is connected with excitement and science with precision. But when the two are switched up and thought of as Nabokov says, than two things that usually don't go together can be combined to transform into a work of art. In a way Pale Fire is demonstrating this with Kinbote as pure science and Shade as the poet. Anabasis is all about taking the trip to combine things that seem to not have any correlation with each other to form some overall pattern.
Supernatural Connection
In Nabokov's writing when he says something is not worth reading or is pointless information, he really means that you should spend careful time with the details of that passage. There are two specific cases of this that connect to Hazel shades relationship with the supernatural. The first is in commentary to line 230: a domestic ghost. This passage goes over a forgotten detail that was forgotten for the simple fact that it is unexplainable. The end of this note explains how the limits of human rationality is a crutch that limits the mind from paying attention to details of the supernatural. The month of supernatural connection between the recently deceased Aunt Maud and Hazel consisted of many misplacements of objects or objects that showed up in places they did not belong. There was no explanation for the events because they normally just do not happen. The funny thing about the whole event in this novel was that Hazel did not fear the events like her parents but was more interested in what was happening. As I said before she was the deviate in this case that Mary McCarthy was talking about. She has that urging to find out more about the unexplainable. Her parents were more like the average reader, they at first confuse the unexplained and fear the supernatural but as soon as things go back to what they can understand they move on and forget about what happened or the passage in a book. It is the deviate that has a chance ot explain the unexplainable.
Hazel like Kinbote have what it takes to be the deviate. Kinbote with his Zemblan magic and Hazel with her taste for the supernatural world can take simple looked over detail and find the meaning of life from it. Both realize and amuzed with the creative irony of magic or supernatural forces, and how it is so oftenly considered insignificant. Its funny how society can not deal with the unexplainable and think that those that can are crazy. In the novel Kinbote states his feeling toward society saying –
but how curious it is that we do not perceive a mysterious sign of equation between the Hercules springing forth from a neurotic child's weak frame and the boisterous ghost of Aunt Maud; how curious that our rationality feels satisfied when we plump for the first explanation, though, actually, the scientific and the supernatural, the miracle of the muscle and the miracle of the mind, are both inexplicable as are all the ways of Our Lord.
This connects with the idea that we to often are satisfied with a win or loss as long as the chess game does not end in a draw. This book as a chess game is a perfect example of our world as “Our Lord” has made for us. So much in this book is unexplainable but we still search for an explaination for what we are reading (win) or if not then we give up and say that the game is stupid or the novel is bad (loss). It is true that in life and in this novel that as we keep reading that what we once thought to be true has been contradicted in the next passage. We are or should be switching up our thought process with each new time we open the book. The things that we choose to believe and not have a connectedness that we still haven't found out yet. The search for uniting numerous details and events with each other is a never-ending process. This paper might have an ending but it is not a conclusion but more of an intermission.
The second detail that is connected to Hazel's relationship with the dead is in the barn right before her life is ended. The case of the barn was much the same as the one six years ago in her house that I stated above. And as Dr. Sutton in the novel stated – “that cases in which the same person was again involved in the same type of outbreaks after a lapse of six years were practically unkown” (Nabokov. Pale Fire). Through her second connection with the supernatural which might be Aunt Maud or not, she can acctually talk with the ghost. The ghost tells her the radom combination of letters that is written –
pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told (Nabokov. P.F.).
This message is one of the great mystaries of the novel. I could tell you what it means or atleast what it can be translated to mean, but I feel the message was for Hazel and that only she can understand the purpose of the message. What I can tell you though is that it was a warning to Hazel but at the same time an invitation. If you read on a little further in the novel Kinbote explains that the spirit attacks Hazel which it had not done before and that from that moment she was finally scared rather than interested because she new she was dealing with an evil force that probably was not her Aunt Maud. For me I connected this evil force with death itself and even though Hazel was afraid of it she still had a tremendous respect for it that the average person would not have until they knew their time was coming. She had experienced the afterlife before death and she had found the answer before the question was even presented. I think that the reason she commited suicide was because she could not deal with the warning that she had received or with not being able to telling her parents about the warning because they would not understand just like they did not believe in the mystary of the barn. It is a tragic pitty that Hazel had to die. It is also a tragic pitty that the reason for it was because the rest of the world could not connect on the same level as Hazel could. Her fate was to be a ghost for those few that search her out much like she had done when alive. For it is not the job of a ghost to tell a person ther truth or future by searching for a person but for a person to discover the ghost on their own. The supernatural works in mysterious ways but it only has connection with those that are tedious and those that are curious.
Finally, Why Eystein
There has been two main questions when reading this novel, that are beside the point of the afterlife, that come up in my mind. The first is what does this rediculous commentary have anything to do with the poem. The second is where are the crown jewels. I feel like even though they don't have much to do with the topic of my paper, that if these two questions can be answered that they will lead to the ultimate questions of love, loss and its connection with the afterlife.
The first question was a hard one but I thought I would start with the only passage that acctually had Zembla in it. Right after the word is stated in Shade's poem, there is a very important (I just figured this because it was italicized) passage that is stated – “Man's life as commentary to abstruse unfinished poem. Note for further use” (Nabokov. P.F.). This passage tells me that for one this poem is not finished.This probly explains why Kinbote thought there would be a final line of the poem which is the same as the first line. That phrase aslo tels me that a mans life is full of commentary to something that the man does not understand. It is our job to further embelish on the unfinished poem even if we may not understand the initial point of the poem.
It seemed that Kinbote misinterpreted Shade's use of Zembla in the poem as being the same as the land He use to rule. But I think that the afful misinterpretion of Kinbote, in a way is the purpose of the novel itself not just the poem. It is through misinterpretation, where we learn more information and how to connect that information into a piece of art or single idea (but it is important to note that the idea will be incomplete so it leaves room for more misinterpretation just like the poem). I think that the amount of discoviries and connection in this novel with events and stories histroy, that there is no point in trying to understand the point of this poem. As a good commentator it seems that we have to read into the poem the best we can even if we completely miss the point or rather “myth the point” as Kinbote has clearly done.
The second big question that I would like to answer was where could those crown jewels be. At first I thought to look in the index and found that it was no help and that it only led me in circles, much like the Russians in the novel that were hired to find the crown jewels in the palace. I did get one clue from my search and that was that the answer had to be in Kinbotes commentary to line 130 in the poem. I could not find the answer until I read the short story “Solus Rex” and the passage that ended the story saying –
As K advanced toward the exit, he had the nightmare sensation that, maybe, the door was a still-life painting, that its handle was en rompe-I'oeil, and could not be turned. But all at once the door became real, and, escorted by a youth, who had softly come out of some other room in his bed slippers with a bundle of keys, K proceeded to go down a long and dark staircase.
First off if you were wondering the phrase en rompe-I'oeil is a french phrase that means “deceive the eye,” usually used in art ( Wikipedia). This is also the type of art that Eystein is famous for which is relevant. This passage explains that K or Kinbote in Pale Fire had discovered a somewhat similar experience as Hazel had. And in all case the person escaped the world that they had been currently residing in. All of them had to be guided by and outsider to understand that they had to exit the so called “real world” to have a clear mind to discover what they were really searching for. Shade realized the same fate as the others did but maybe a little latter than the rest as it was exactly right before his untimely death.
The two Soviet professionals in Pale Fire were contrasting characters to the three above (not including K only because he was from a different story and he is very much a reflection of Kinbote anyways).The two Soviet professionals had come so close but were so far away form finding the crown jewels because they were blinded by the real world. The las place that the Russians had search in the palace was the gallery that contained the art of Eystein. They came to a painting of the crown jewels and thought that the jewels might be hidden behind the painting. They had left in disipointment when tearing the painting of the wall produced no results. Their fatal mistake was not thinking that the painting had to do with the crown jewels but that it was the piece of art that was the crown jewels. The picture contained the jewels inside of it. The painting that looked real was actually real and it had done its job which was to “decieve the eye.”
After answering these tough questions it occurred to me that it did not matter in the first place what the answers were. It was the search of the answers that was more worth it than the end result. I had learned more about the book as a whole trying to find the answer to what I thought to be an important question, when the answer really doesn't mean anything to me. It is funny that the things society and myself find to be most valuable turn out to be worthless and that the art of deceit and mistranstlation is worth a lot more to us. It is very ironic that the painting that no one cared about was the very thing that contained the very thing everyone was searching for. It is also funny that we are decieved by art when it is the act of deciet that is the answer to it all. True are is the answer not the goal, “the basic fact that “reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average “reality” perceived by the communal eye” (Nabokov. P.F.).
Intermission Statement
We are the outsider, the third wheel, but we transform into the lone black king with a switch of the chess board. A good reader is one that is always looking for more, they do not mind taking the fifty move and ending in a draw. This is because they know they will learn from Nabokov and come closer to thinking like him. Trickery and thinking outside the box is the whole game. But in this novel as a chess game Nabokov has thought of all of our moves already and has an answer to everyone. The game will never end because it will always end in a draw, leading to another being played. The game has been writen out for us and that is Nabokov's gift to us. But we also need a supernatural guide to help us understand what we are reading. It is the understanding or the mis-understanding though that brings us closer to Nabokov. This book is really close to climbing an infinate latter. We may get closer everytime we read another passage but we will never reach the end. When we first look in the mirror or windowpane we see ourself's reflection. But when we look again after playing the game we see Nabokov. The funny thing though is that we are not scared or awed to see that in the mirror. We realize that this is all apart of a perfecct endless game and are happy to be apart of it. The reason this is the perfect game is because Nabokov has found the perfect way to get past the black abis and that is through Anabasis or having us the lone black king do the work for him. Nabokov has become infinte himself because he lives in the true Kinbote or Zemblan reader.
Works Cited
“Anabasis.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis
Barabltarlo, Gennady. “Nabokov's trinity (on the movement of Nabokov's themes).” <www.kobalatan.com/2011/03/
Coats, Steve & Kurt Johnson. Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius. Cambridge. Zoland, 1999. Print.
McCarthy, Mary. “A Bolt From the Blue.” innerlea.com. The New Republic, June 4 1962. Web. 11 December 2011.
Nabokov, Vladamir. Pale Fire. New York. Berkly, 1962. Print.
Nabokov, Vladamir. Speak Memory: An Autopiography Revisisted. New York. Vintage, 1989. Print.
“Timon of Athens.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timon_
“Trompe-I'oeil.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-
“Tow Knights Defense.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_
I forgot to write down the source of the book that contained “Solus Rex.”
