I also like
“How to locate in blackness, with a gasp,
Terra the fair, an orbicle of jasp”
but then so did Kinbote and it doesn’t really apply to your initial post.
What should I think about Pale Fire the novel, the poem within, and all the critical ink spilled over them?
I confess that Pale Fire is the least accessible of Nabokov’s works for me (unless you include awful Ada); I have for years taught and adored Pnin and Lolita and Speak Memory and the spectacular short stories. But what I took from PF, I’m afraid, was the practically unbearable description (for me, at least) of Hazel Shade’s life and death. I somehow couldn’t get past the fully convincing human cruelty and grief of that part of the novel to romp cleverly above it all in the playful rest of it. I realize this makes me dull and no fun.
And of course Pnin is full of much more frontal cruelty than PF – the scene in which Pnin thinks he has broken the beautiful punch bowl Victor has given him, or all of the scenes in which Pnin’s gentle kindly eccentric ways are received with condescension and contempt by American idiots — these are similarly rough going for hypersensitive UD. And yet I love Pnin, and can keep reading it, while PF somehow repels me.
December 19th, 2019 at 12:42PM
Perhaps “I had in mind diabolical rules likely to be broken by the other party as soon as we come to understand them.”
December 20th, 2019 at 11:23AM
Ravi: Lovely. I like a phrase that comes right after that: The soul must rely on the dust of its husk.
December 20th, 2019 at 4:15PM
I also like
“How to locate in blackness, with a gasp,
Terra the fair, an orbicle of jasp”
but then so did Kinbote and it doesn’t really apply to your initial post.
What should I think about Pale Fire the novel, the poem within, and all the critical ink spilled over them?
December 20th, 2019 at 6:51PM
I confess that Pale Fire is the least accessible of Nabokov’s works for me (unless you include awful Ada); I have for years taught and adored Pnin and Lolita and Speak Memory and the spectacular short stories. But what I took from PF, I’m afraid, was the practically unbearable description (for me, at least) of Hazel Shade’s life and death. I somehow couldn’t get past the fully convincing human cruelty and grief of that part of the novel to romp cleverly above it all in the playful rest of it. I realize this makes me dull and no fun.
December 20th, 2019 at 7:21PM
Thanks. Agreed, PF’s “Glass Menagerie” section is very difficult. Pnin didn’t register with me. There was a story, it ended and that was that.
December 20th, 2019 at 7:31PM
And of course Pnin is full of much more frontal cruelty than PF – the scene in which Pnin thinks he has broken the beautiful punch bowl Victor has given him, or all of the scenes in which Pnin’s gentle kindly eccentric ways are received with condescension and contempt by American idiots — these are similarly rough going for hypersensitive UD. And yet I love Pnin, and can keep reading it, while PF somehow repels me.
December 20th, 2019 at 9:33PM
My recollection is that Pnin was treated badly by everyone. I have Speak Memory on the shelf, need to read it one of these days.