PALE FIRE AND TRANSPARENT THINGS :

ANALOGIE S AND DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ART AND LIFE

Pale Fire

and

Transparent Things

exempl i fy the di ffering narrative approaches of Nabokov ' s first two English novels . Jus t as the l i fe and work of Sebas ti an Knight constitute a focus for V . ' s self-revealing ' biography ' of hi s hal f-brother in

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight ,

so in

Pale Fire

John Shade ' s autobiographical poem provides a bas i s for the critical commentary o f Charles Kinbote whose sycophantic response s to the poe t , like V . ' s to Sebastian Knigh t , combine with his

solipsistic attempt to trans form his personal existence through

Shade ' s art . In

Bend Sinister

and

Transparent Things

Nabokov

employs a different approach . Each novel i s presented as the

acknowledged artifice o f an ' omniscient ' author , a peripheral i f intrusive figure who involve s the reader in the proces s e s of authorial compos ition , while dramatizing characters engaged

in non-fictive mode s of repre sentation . Rather than consider

the narrative approache s of

Pale Fire

and

Transparent Things

in any detail , there fore , I propose to concentrate my discussion on the ways in which Nabokov ' s structuring of these two nove l s contribute s to h i s characterizations .

Nabokov ' s structuring o f

Pale Fire

reworks the conventions

of fiction and non-fiction in a unique experiment with the form

of the novel . He himself points out that " The form of

Pale Fire

is specifically , i f not generically , new"

(SO ,

p . 7 5 ) . He

evolves this "new" form by combining the generic characteristic s of poetry and of literary exegesis in a nove l which challenges traditional expe ctations of verbal genres whil e i t reuses established conventions o f art and o f scholarship to portray the consciousness of the two major characters , Shade and

Kinbote . Mos t immediately , Nabokov ' s structural de sign j uxtaposes Shade ' s self-conscious art and Kinbote ' s supposed

' scholarship . ' And while poem and commentary reflect the

differing awarenesses o f their re spective writers , in

combination they dramatize the relationship between artist , art work and reade r . Nabokov exploits thi s relationship in

two ways . Mos t obvious ly , Kinbote ' s commentary affords the

basis for Nabokov ' s parodic exposure o f critical exeges i s that confuses art and l i fe by attempting to explicate the art work by reference either to the poet ' s or the commentator ' s l i fe . 1 At the same time , Kinbote ' s use o f ' biographical ' information

establ i shes him as a mouthpiece for the novel ' s world . Within

the s imulated non-fictive context o f thi s world , the conventions of impersonal scholarship provide a critical perspective on Kinbote ' s representation of biographical as well as ae sthetic

' realities . ' As a commentary on Shade ' s poem , then , Kinbote ' s supposedly non-fictive representations o f art and l i fe contrast wi th Shade ' s artistic re-creation of literary and auto­

biographical materials . Thus Nabokov ' s s tructural design

explores the analogies and the distinctions b etween literary and non-fictive mode s of repre sentation by dramati zing them in hi s two invented wri ters' styli zations .

Shade ' s poem is the centrepiece of Nabokov ' s novel . The

Augustan form and the autobiographical content o f the poem are fused into a first-person monologue that produces a self­

conscious exploration of styli stic strategies . The aesthetic

worlds o f previous writers are j uxtaposed with Shade ' s past experiences and fused in the ongoing present of the poem into philosophical mus ings which continually return Shade to the

nature of human existence . On the one han� Shade reuses the

forms and bel i efs of previous l i terature to evolve hi s own

twentieth-century vision . On the other hand

;

he reworks the

details o f hi s own l ife into a metaphoric dramatization of man

in relation to the data o f existence . Whil e the poem plays

with literary allusions ranging from Shakespeare to Joyce ,

Shade ' s extended reincorporation o f Pope ' s

Essay on Man

into

a poem of autobiographical experience that echoes Wordsworth ' s

Pre lude

brings together Augustan and Romantic metaphysics , and

1 8 7 balances the Augustan preoccupation with reason and abstraction

against the Romantic concern with imaginative response . 2

Pope ' s pos ition in the

Essay on Man

i s that the poet ' s

work can provide a paradigm for universal experience by using a knowledge of the actual to abstract an order that displays

the ways of God to man . The acceptance of the world as planned

by God allows a resolution of earthly suffering and death

through the concept of an afterlife or Heaven . By contra s t ,

the Romantic approach t o immortality attributes primary s ignificance to the poet ' s personal responses to the world . Spiritual signi ficance is located in the operations o f

consciousnes s and provides intimations o f s urvival after de ath . Yet in the ir different ways both Augustan and Romantic views do not distinguish between factual and imaginative versions o f

existence . Shade " in the framehouse between Goldsworth and

Wordsmith" ( 11 . 4 8-49 ) s tands apart by parodically opposing

Augustan and Romantic metaphysics . The diachronic perspective

of his philosophical endeavours to re concile l i fe with i ts eventual termination sugge sts that all such attempts are

fictional illusions . The synchronic perspective provided in

Shade ' s personal knowledge of existence distinguishes betwe e n the data of his experience and hi s sub j ective versions of

exi stence . In the sense that Shade has not created the data

of his " given world , " he is authored . In the sense that he

consc iously recons tructs such data i n subjective versions o f

his life h e i s also a n author . Finally , Shade ' s j uxtaposition

of a diachronic and a synchronic perspective suggests that , since all man ' s versions o f existence are s tylizations , l i fe i s a lexical " game o f worlds " ( 1 . 8 1 9 ) .

Similarly , Shade ' s s truc tural division of the poem into four cantos together with his use of heroic couplets rework the organization and form of Pope ' s four epis tles , thereby acknowledging the comparable arti fice o f his own undertaking . In Canto One the abstract canvas o f Pope ' s Epis tle One , "Of the Nature and State of Man with Respect to the Universe , " is parodi cally explored by Shade ' s analytical account of hi s

personal relationship to the data o f experience . The first

consciousnes s by suggesting the des tructive power of artistic imagination which does not represent the ' realities ' of nature , but rather , as Bader points out , creates a new reality , the

3

work of art . Most immediately , however , Shade explores the

paradox that even man ' s direct perceptions o f nature constitute a co-exi sting but separate ' conscious reality ' which blends

knowledge and imaginative artifice . 4 First Shade suggests how

direct perception provides the material s of consciousness : All colors made me happy : even gray .

My eye s were such that literally they

Took photographs . ( 11 . 2 9 - 3 1 )

Jus t as consciousnes s artificially reproduce s such perceptions , so it interweaves past and pres ent knowledge in ongoing

individual awarenes s . The poet ' s awareness o f the pass age o f

time through h i s relationship to nature , his own failing s i gh t and the young shagbark "now s tout and rough" ( 1 . 5 4 ) , i s

complemented by h i s knowledge o f man-made changes , the removal of Hazel ' s swing , the revamped wing of Shade ' s house , and the technological advances evidenced by " the new TV" ( l . 7 0 ) . Thus wi thin ongoing ' conscious reali ty ' a certain factual

permanence is provided through individual memory . However ,

memory involves imaginative arti fice as well as factual

information . Shade wryly acknowledges that his few known

facts about his parents evoke "a thousand parents " ( 1 . 7 4 )

within h i s consciousness . Moreove r , thes e few known facts

about his parents contrast with hi s personal memories of his Aunt Maud , and with the styli stic reflections o f her

personality that remain in her old room : " Its trivia create I A still l i fe in her styl e " ( 11 . 9 1 -9 2 ) .

Confronted with deaths of parent figures in his l i fe , Shade , unlike Pope , reverses Augus tan metaphysics which seek

to immortali ze the dead : "My God died young" ( 1 . 9 9 ) . And ,

unlike the Romantic s , Shade ' s boyhood experiences reinforce a sense of confinement within nature : " How fully I fe lt nature

glued to me " ( 1 . 1 0 2 ) . Whereas Wordsworth views li fe as a

progre s s ive loss of the " intimations o f immortality " he perceives in the young child ' s relation to nature , the young

1 89 Shade experienc es only the impri soning arti fice o f hi s

perceptions of nature , " the painted parchment" ( 1 . 1 06 ) , whi ch suggests hi s conscious separation from the independent

' realitie s ' of nature : "For we are most artistically caged"

( 1 . 1 1 4 ) . Again , in contrast either to Pope ' s view that human

deformi ties are part of God ' s plan , or to Wordsworth ' s view that the child has a spe cial affini ty with nature , Shade sugges ts how his personal uncouthnes s restricts his boyhood

participation in physical activities . The progression from

the opening lines of the Canto to " I was the shadow of the waxwing s lain I By feigned remotenes s in the windowpane "

( 1 1 . 1 3 1 -3 2 ) initiate s Shade ' s de scription of h i s physical

isolation from others --" I was a cloutish freak " ( 1 . 1 3 2 ) . At

the same time , his conscious acceptance of his uncouthness i s evident in the words , "But really envied nothing " ( 1 . 1 36 ) . Final ly , in a parodic reversal o f Wordsworthian imagery , Shade ' s perception o f a man-made clockwork toy , "A tin wheelbarrow

pushed by a tin boy" ( 1 . 1 44 ) , precedes a swoon during which an imaginative dream world provides alluring , but corrupting vi s ions of the boy ' s re lationship to space and time within a state that itsel f seems a phy sical intimation of death .

The Wordsworthian opening of Canto Two elaborates Shade ' s

personal preoccupation wi th immo rtality . In oppos i tion to

Wordsworth ' s images of the " celestial l ight " adhering to chi ld­ hoo d , Shade recalls the youth ' s baffled feelings o f ignorance and o f human conspiracy :

There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being : I alone

Knew nothing , and a great conspiracy

Of books and people hid the truth from me . ( 11 . 1 6 8- 7 2 )

Shade ' s resolve to explore the mystery of death takes up the sub j ec t of Pope ' s Epi stle Two , "Of the Nature and State of Man with Respect to Himself as an Individual , " but in place of Pope ' s generali z ing abstractions , Shade ' s poem focuses on h i s individual experience , the nature o f love and death in his own

In document Structure and style : an approach to characterization in Nabokov's English novels : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University (Page 196-200)