Ian "Marvin" Graye's Reviews > Pale Fire

FOREWORD:

"Canon Fire", a poem in heroic couplets, of thirty-six lines, consisting of only one canto, was composed by Ian Vinogradus (born March 4, 1957) during the last two days of his life (up to that point in time), at his residence in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

He started the poem on Saturday, July 16, 2016, on the evening that the military coup occurred in Turkey. He completed it the following day, Sunday, July 17, 2016, after it became clear that the coup had failed.

POEM:

Canon Fire
[After and In Many of the Words of Vladimir Nabokov, John Shade and Charles Kinbote]

I have a certain liking, I admit,
For parody, that last resort of wit.
Though any jackass can rig up the stuff
In this epoch when packs of rogues can bluff
Like the prosemongers of the Grubby Group;
The Mitsein Man, the owlish Nincompoop,
And the Post-Modern Acolytes of our age
Leave but a pinch of coal dust on the page.
Readers who think there’s something you can learn,
Listen to distant cocks crow, and discern
Conmal, the hack reviewer of fat books
That staid academia overlooks,
Who inveighs against populist traction
With unpardonable satisfaction.
This pompous obtuse son of a bitch
Photographs all his books to show like kitsch.
Though he’s a stranger to modesty,
Like many near-cretins, he craves novelty.
Some regard the blockhead's demolishment
And his rave with similar detachment.
True, his Vollmann crits only loudly cry,
Each work is "a great book by a great guy."
Pretending to all that he’s contrary,
He lives too much in his library,
Not to mention various other nooks
Among the bewitched hush of buried books.
He surrounds himself with young boys and youths
Who generate likes in quanta profuse,
Mere mechanisms of haphazard lust.
His taste is something you can barely trust.
His titles possess a specious glamour,
He bangs on about them with his hammer.
Hence, devoted fools, timorous and grim,
Applaud his ev’ry pronouncement and whim,
While others respond with acrimony
To praise of books they can tell are phony.




COMMENTARY:

Juxtaposition of the Elements

"Pale Fire", the novel upon which "Canon Fire" is modelled, is a swarm or flight (view spoiler)[or a flutter (hide spoiler)] of butterflies in a hall of mirrors.

I've always been fascinated by what happens when an author juxtaposes two or more different creative elements within the one work. What is meant by the juxtaposition? What happens as a result of the juxtaposition? Does it change the interpretation of the whole or does one element change the interpretation of the other?

In "Pale Fire", there are four such elements: a foreword, the poem itself, a commentary and an index.

Although "Pale Fire" is the name of the poem, it's also the name of the collective work as a whole. Thus, Nabokov redefines the scope of a novel, so as to extend to both a work of fiction and a (fictitious) commentary on that work.

This shaped my initial reaction to the work as a whole. It seemed that the dominant theme was the relationship of a reader's response, or an academic's criticism, to the work itself. Charles Kinbote, the academic, almost overwhelmed the author's intent or work, in his self-indulgent commentary. In a way, the work didn't live up to his expectations. Not only does he attempt to shape the interpretation of the poem, but he expresses disappointment that it doesn't live up to his inspiration or suggestions for inclusion in the poem. In a way, the muse is judging the creator.

While this point deserves and needs to be made, much more is revealed as you read on. The relationship between Kinbote and the poet John Shade is much more complex. The commentary becomes a thriller or suspense novella in its own right.

Making Ornaments of Accidents and Possibilities

A lot is revealed by the first four lines of the poem:

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure of the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky."

Who is the first person "I"?

Is it the poet or author, or is it the narrator? Or, perhaps, the poem/work itself? Or, double perhaps, the reader's response (which keeps the work alive)?

The real event is a bird hitting a windowpane, unaware that the sky it is flying towards is a reflection, a fiction, a falsity, a fraud, a semblance of reality.

The bird is not so much lost in translation, as lost in transition between reality and fiction.

The bird we think we see isn't real, but a shadow, an illusion. Yet, even if the real bird dies as it hits the windowpane, the illusion continues, it "lives on, in the reflected sky." In a way, fiction has the ability to transcend reality.

At one point, Kinbote asserts 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."

Ironically, Kinbote believes that Shade's fiction should look more like his (Kinbote's) reality. This is quite different from expecting the work to look like his fiction, the fiction that he imagines as he reads the work. Both reactions are possible in this work. However, in a normal case (where a reader has had no factual input into the conceptualisation of the actual work), only the second reaction is possible.

A Monstrous Semblance of a Novel

Nevertheless, we as readers of the work approach the commentary, prepared to give some credence to Kinbote's version of the poem. His interpretation seems to reflect his intimate knowledge of its creator and its creation, as well as his purported influence on its creation.

Yet, as we read on, we become more convinced that Kinbote is misguided, egotistical, maybe even insane. Thus, bit by bit, he becomes an unreliable narrator or commentator.

We learn that other academics question Kinbote's views, in favour of their own. They stake rival claims for ownership of the frontier field of Shadean Studies.

Perhaps, this is Nabokov's way of questioning the veracity of all academic interpretation and criticism? Perhaps, he was trying to create a work so sophisticated that it would keep critics forever guessing (wrongly!) about its meaning (whether or not this is a worthwhile task at all).

Kinbote suggests (a little disingenuously):

"I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel."

As Nabokov himself would say:

"I do not believe in any kind of interpretation."

Perhaps, he just wanted us to enjoy the beauty of the language, and to play along with his ludicrous game.

Maybe, he just wanted us to fly into the windowpane, to pass through the looking glass, and discover the fictitious world that lies beyond, the semblance of the world of Zembla that is there?

"Engazhay and Compelling"

As if this is not possibility enough, Nabokov encourages and permits us to question whether Kinbote is the construction of Shade, or vice versa. Is one a shadow of the other? If so, which one?

If we ignore the author himself, which narrator should prevail?

Nabokov/Shade inserts a syllogism into his poem:

"Other men die; but I am not another; therefore I'll not die."

Is the first person narrator a fictional person who, unlike the author and the reader, cannot die? Is literature and its assemblage of characters capable of immortality?

"How curious that our rationality feels satisfied when we plump for the first explanation?"

"How ludicrous these efforts to translate
Into one's private tongue a public fate?
Life is a message scribbled in the dark."

This is the most ludicrous novel ever written. So far.

INDEX:

Conmal, Duke of Arrogance line 11, cretinous nature line 17, his presence in library line 24, identity almost revealed line 27, writing style line 11

Mitsein Man, Heideggerian henchman line 6

Vollmann, William T., The most overrated American novelist since William H. Gass, uncritical review of line 21