NABOKOV’S Pale Fire Copyright1999byBrianBoyd PublishedbyPrincetonUniversityPress,41WilliamStreet, Princeton,NewJersey08540 IntheUnitedKingdom:PrincetonUniversityPress, Chichester,WestSussex AllRightsReserved LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Boyd,Brian,1952– Nabokov’spalefire:themagicofartistic discovery/BrianBoyd. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN0-691-00959-7(cloth:alk.paper) 1.Nabokov,VladimirVladimirovich,1899–1977. Palefire. I.Title. II.Title:Palefire. PS3527.A15P3334 1999 813′.54—dc21 99-30682 ThisbookhasbeencomposedinPalatino Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimum requirementsofANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992(R1997) (PermanenceofPaper) http://pup.princeton.edu PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To BRONWEN We are discoverers: and discovery is a creative art. (KARL POPPER, Conjectures and Refutations) Contents xi Acknowledgments 3 Introduction 15 PART ONE • THESIS: READING STORY AS DISCOVERY 17 1. Foreword 25 2. Poem 37 3. Commentary 63 4. Index 67 5. Pale Fire 75 PART TWO • ANTITHESIS: REREADING IN SEARCH OF THE STORY BEHIND 77 6. Intrusions of the Real: Shade 89 7. Excursions from the Real: Kinbote 107 8. Problems: Shade and Kinbote 127 PART THREE • SYNTHESIS: RE-REREADING DISCOVERY AS STORY 129 9. Transformation x CONTENTS 149 10. From Appalachia to Zembla: A Woman Spurned 173 11. “Pale Fire”: Origins and Ends 188 12. “A Poem in Four Cantos”: Sign and Design 207 13. From Zembla to Appalachia: The Contrapuntal Theme 233 14. “Pale Fire,” Pale Fire, pale fire: The Spiral Unwinds 247 Conclusion 263 Notes 291 Bibliography 299 Index Acknowledgments I WOULD LIKE to thank those who accepted and supported parts of my earlier case—readers like Chris Ackerley, Paul Tudor, Gennady Barabtarlo, John Morris, Andrew Hoyem, and Sergey Il’yn; those who resisted it, especially those who did so with specific arguments, like David Lodge, Ellen Pifer, and Charles Nicol; and those who have written well on Pale Fire while focusing on other aspects of the novel altogether, like Robert Alter, Richard Rorty, and Michael Wood. In this story of what can be gradually discovered in reading, I would like to acknowledge all who have contributed in print to our growing understanding of Pale Fire, from early readers like Mary Mc- Carthy and Carol T. Williams to the Kinboteans, Shadeans, the Kin- bote-or-Shadeans, and the anti-Shadeans who emerged from the mid-1960s on: Page Stegner, Andrew Field, Julia Bader, Peter Rabin- owitz, Alvin B. Kernan, D. Barton Johnson, Pekka Tammi, Gerard de Vries, and many others. Some, including Lisa Zunshine, Omry Ronen, and Robert Dirig, have supplied details or prompted ideas at conferences, while other keen readers who have never published on Pale Fire or on Nabokov at all have privately offered me information that had escaped professional scholars and critics. An observation by Tony Fazio precipitated half a chapter. Chris Ackerley, Matthew Brillinger, D. Barton Johnson, Gennady Barabtarlo, Galya Diment, Michael Wood, and Andrew Langridge all read the whole manuscript with care. I am indebted to Professor Ba- rabtarlo for a particularly meticulous reading and one very fruitful suggestion and to Professor Wood for such firm and articulate resis- tance. Beth Gianfagna has once again proved an ideally sensitive copy editor. I would especially like to thank Dmitri Nabokov for his contribu- tion to the Internet discussion of Pale Fire that pointed out his fa- ther’s amusement at both Kinbotean and Shadean stances; Zoran Kuzmanovich, editor of Nabokov Studies (where an earlier version of xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS chapters 8 and 13 appeared), for prodding me with further ques- tions, even after I had passed beyond a Shadean reading; Dieter E. Zimmer, for following up a particular line of inquiry for me, as so often before, and for the service hehasprovided to all of those work- ing on the Lepidoptera in Nabokov in his Guide to Nabokov’s Butter- flies and Moths; MacDonald P. Jackson, for urging me to write the book without delay; and above all, Bronwen Nicholson, for her criti- cism, suggestions, forbearance, support, and much more; and Vladi- mir Nabokov, for eventually making it possible to find a much more exciting explanation of what really happens and what is really at stake in Pale Fire. I wishhe could read this centenary offering. NABOKOV’S Pale Fire