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Justin Chen Literary Creation as Transcendent Illumination in Nabokov’s Pale Fire “See Browning’s My Last Duchess,” reads the rather irrelevant note to lines 671-672 of John Shade’s poem, Pale Fire—“See it and condemn the fashionable device of entitling a collection of essays or a volume of poetry—or a long poem, alas—with a phrase lifted from a more or less celebrated poetical work of the past” (240). (1) As Charles Kinbote, author of the commentary and erstwhile friend of the deceased poet, goes on to explain, “Such titles possess a specious glamour acceptable maybe in the names of vintage wines and plump courtesans but only degrading in regard to the talent that substitutes the easy allusiveness of literacy for original fancy” (240). What Kinbote fails to realize, of course, is that the title to Shade’s poem has itself been “lifted” from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens—an oversight made all the more egregious because a Zemblan copy of that play happens to be the only work of Shakespeare that Kinbote actually owns. Even more ironically, the disdain that Kinbote shows for the air of theft that surrounds literary analysis and allusion is exactly the type of suspicious sentiment with which he, as a literary commentator, is constantly faced. Pale Fire’s attempt to explore the solipsistic nature of modern criticism naturally brings the tension between original creation and seemingly derivative commentary to the fore, and the clear allusion in the novel’s title to Timon of Athens forces the reader to consider whether Kinbote and his colleagues are in fact thieves, or whether, like Shakespeare’s moon, whose “pale fire she snatches from the sun” (4.3.445), (2) literary criticism is just one part of a never-ending cycle of interpretation that subsequently creates new meaning. Kinbote’s unease about his own legitimacy as the poem’s commentator is evident throughout the novel. Even as early as the protracted and desultory foreword, he peevishly lashes out at critics such as Shade’s former lawyer, who calls Kinbote’s contract for sole possession of the poem “a fantastic farrago of evil” (16). Yet the question of ownership is important for more than just legal or monetary reasons. As Kinbote astutely points out, “for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word” (29). Indeed, he argues, “Without my notes Shade’s text simply has no human reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his…has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings…a reality that only my notes can provide” (28-9). Kinbote’s suggestion that the commentary eclipses the actual text in the process of creating meaning clearly represents an inversion of traditional roles. Yet his comments also seem to imply that the solipsism of the commentator is not so different from that of the poet in producing the original text, for all writing is ultimately an expression of personal insight, and, at its extreme of self-involvement, can only be appreciated by an audience of one. Whether or not Kinbote is correct in his claim that he is the only person who can provide insight into Shade’s life and make the poem meaningful to the reader, Nabokov’s underlying point is clear—any literary work, including a work of interpretation, is an act of creation. Thus, Kinbote’s reading of his native Zembla into Pale Fire is just as much a form of original narrative as Shade’s poem itself. Kinbote himself does not initially intend for his commentary to be a creative endeavor. Rather, he hopes that his vivid and colorful descriptions of Zembla will provide the first inspirational sparks for John Shade’s poetic quest. As Kinbote describes it, “I felt…that [Shade] would recreate in a poem the dazzling Zembla burning in my brain. I mesmerized him with it, I saturated him with my vision, I pressed upon him…all that I was helpless myself to put into verse” (80). In a field so concerned with originality that the term “anxiety of influence” has been coined to describe the creative dilemma of post-Miltonian English writers, intimidated by their daunting legacy, Kinbote’s explanation of his own role in the process of Pale Fire’s creation can best be seen as an attempt to somehow establish himself in the literary tradition through the use of Shade’s creative gifts. Indeed, Kinbote self-flatteringly writes, “One can hardly doubt that the sunset glow of the story [of Zembla] acted as a catalytic agent upon the very process of the sustained creative effervescence that enabled Shade to produce a 1000-line poem in three weeks” (81). The phrases “sunset glow” and “creative effervescence” in this passage allude to the book’s title, and they frame the discussion of inspiration in the imagery of creative fire or light. Again, Kinbote hopes that his vivid descriptions of his homeland will providing the initial flames for Shade’s endeavor, and that his influence on a great poetic work will establish him in the annals of literature as Shade’s muse. Such a hope seems ludicrous to anyone who has read both the commentary and the poem in their entirety. Indeed, Kinbote adds, almost as an afterthought: “Oh yes, the final text of the poem is entirely [Shade’s]” (81). Yet by claiming to be the original source of Shade’s inspiration, Kinbote highlights the fact that creativity is often more derivative than one might imagine. Just as Kinbote claims to find himself “borrowing a kind of opalescent light from [his] poet’s fiery orb” (81), so too must the reader wonder whence the poet himself derives his own literary inspiration. Though Kinbote attempts to take credit for being Shade’s greatest influence, he concedes that the poet possesses a power he himself lacks—the ability to create. When Shade questions, “How can you know that all this intimate stuff about your rather appalling king is true?,” Kinbote responds, “Once transmuted by you into poetry, the stuff will be true, and the people will come alive” (214). Kinbote’s statement is essentially a profession of faith in the generative, productive capabilities of poetry. Indeed, he conceives of Shade as “perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle” (27). Upon a first glance, this description of the poetic project seems to define the very essence of creativity, for it describes the production of something entirely novel through pure intellectual effort. Yet, as the novel’s title reminds us, every creation necessarily retains muted traces of the constituent elements of which it is composed. Just as the commentary is dependent on a literary work for its own existence, so too must each metaphor, allusion, symbol, or other literary tool be seen as a form of imitation. This language of creation and plagiarism is ironically reminiscent of that infamous wellspring of allusion and imagery in English literature, Milton’s Paradise Lost. In that work, of course, only “immutable, immortal, infinite” (Milton, II.373) (3) God has the power to create, for He is the “sovereign architect” (Milton, V.256). True creation from nothingness, an incomprehensible act that can only be accomplished by a metaphysical being, is the ultimate constructive power. Satan, in contrast, possesses a “God-like imitated state” (Milton, II.511) and “Perverts best things / To worst abuse, or to their meanest use” (Milton, IV.203-4). Indeed, Milton writes, it is Satan who “in the serpent had perverted Eve” (Milton, X.3). Milton’s epic imagery of good and evil casts Satan’s derivative nature in a starkly negative light. Satan does not produce anything of his own, but must instead rely on that which has already been created by others to carry out his destructive agenda. Kinbote, appropriately enough, is also compared to the devil by his detractors. In addition to the claim that his contract for sole possession of the poem is a “fantastic farrago of evil,” Shade’s former literary agent “wonder[s] with a sneer if Mrs. Shade’s tremulous signature might not have been penned ‘in some peculiar kind of red ink’” (16-17). The much-maligned literary critic, then, is lowered to the level of Satan. He is “an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius” (171-2)—a creature solely dependent on another’s creative brilliance for its own survival. Yet as Kinbote implies in his foreword, in the world of literature, there is no such clear-cut distinction between creation and imitation, between oblivious host and opportunistic leech. In fact, the prowess that Kinbote so admires in Shade is in fact not all that distant from his own skills as a literary critic. Kinbote uses his commentary to closely analyze the poem and to interpret it in the language and imagery of his homeland. In the process, he produces something of an “organic miracle” himself—a chimera consisting partly of Shade’s poem and partly of his own mythology. Indeed, the final product can be seen as even more original when one considers how minimally related the commentary is to the poem; Kinbote essentially creates an entirely novel narrative using Shade’s writing as an excuse. Thus, the derivative nature of the literary critic is no longer so evident—Kinbote possesses a power of creation in his own right. Kinbote, of course, does not think of his commentary as a form of creation. Instead, he would like to believe that his notes to Pale Fire merely provide the reader with a glimpse of Zembla, that raw magical material originally intended to dictate the course of Shade’s writing. But if Nabokov calls the primacy of even the writer in the creative process into question, Kinbote’s influence on Shade’s writing must be even more dubious. Kinbote himself admits, “The final text of Pale Fire has been deliberately and drastically drained of every trace of the material I contributed” (81). Thus, just as Nabokov blurs the distinction between writer and literary critic, he purposely clouds the questions of originality throughout the novel. Indeed, his extensive use of the language of reflection and mirroring suggests that the concept of some sort of ultimate Original is necessarily a transcendent one, and necessarily tied to the concept of a divinity capable of extra-material creation. That is, perhaps the title Pale Fire is actually redundant because no fire on this human earth can exist except as a dim reflection of some antecedent blaze—every literary work is the pale product of an infinite chain of theft. Such a conclusion seems to be supported by the context of the phrase “pale fire” in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, the source of the title’s allusion: The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction The passage exhibits a curious kind of reciprocity—each “thief” that Shakespeare mentions has a distinct counterpart, so that a full cycle is completed by the end. Though the moon steals her pale fire from the sun, the sun itself takes from the sea. Similarly, though literary commentary such as Kinbote’s may be seen as a form of theft, one must wonder whether any writing exists that is not part of this cycle of imitation and reflection. Yet such a conclusion need not necessarily be completely bleak. Indeed, there are numerous examples throughout the novel of reflections that serve a positive, inspirational purpose. In one of Kinbote’s particularly long-winded notes, for instance, he describes the look of “rapture and reverence” on the face of a “man in the act of making contact with God,” then goes on to describe “something of that splendor, of that spiritual energy and divine vision, now, in another land, reflected upon the rugged and homely face of old John Shade” (88). The fact that Kinbote mentions Shade’s look of inspiration only after an extensive description of the first man’s spiritual fervor highlights the point that Shade’s fervor is secondhand—it has been experienced earlier and in greater intensity. But although Shade may not relive exactly the same “blaze of bliss” (88), he nevertheless demonstrates signs of inspiration and is filled with the seeds of the creative process, for it is at this time that he truly begins to work on his poem in earnest. Thus, even a reflected feeling of spirituality is capable of inducing artistic creation. Similarly, in Kinbote’s story about Charles II’s escape from Zembla, he describes how a bedside light “was just strong enough to put a bright gleam on the gilt key in the lock of the closet door,” causing “a wonderful conflagration to spread in the prisoner’s mind” (123). Again, the glimmer that the imprisoned king sees is a mere reflection—a pale imitation of the original lamp’s glow. Yet even such a derivative phenomenon is capable of inducing creative thought in Charles’ mind and providing him the key to his own escape, again suggesting that traditionally negative views of imitation must be revised. Furthermore, even if one accepts the notion that all literary works are pale reflections at best, and that the field of literature itself is one continuous series of thefts, the concept of the transcendent Original discussed earlier can still be invoked to justify the poetic project. While describing the barn incident involving Hazel and her parents, Kinbote cites a poem by Shade titled “The Nature of Electricity,” in which the author speculates that electricity—specifically, in artificial lights—is composed of the spirits of the dead. He speculates: “And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole / Town with innumerable lights, / And Shelley’s incandescent soul / Lures the pale moths of starless nights” (192). This beautiful image is framed in the language of light and darkness, and therefore suggests some connection to the novel’s title. If literature is symbolized by the image of light, perhaps Shade’s writing conveys the optimistic message that poesy, represented by the souls of Shakespeare and Shelley, can serve as a beacon in the darkness, even if it is but a pale reflection of something greater. Indeed, Shade writes that “life is a message scribbled in the dark” (41), a sentiment that again makes use of the imagery of the novel’s title. Shade’s statement seems to suggest that humanity exists in a realm without any light. Yet later in the poem, in his discussion of the two aspects of writing poetry, he asserts that the writer’s pen “physically guides the phrase / Toward faint daylight through the inky maze” (64). Though the darkness he describes here refers to the black ink of the pen, the use of light and dark imagery is again suggestive of the novel’s title. In a world filled with reflections and derivatives, symbolized by the “inky maze” of writing, some sort of transcendent Original is often difficult to find. Yet Shade seems to believe that such a goal can and should be pursued, for the daylight, though faint, can nevertheless be perceived by the poet. This discussion all seems to relate to Shade’s “contrapuntal theme”: “Not text, but texture; not the dream Shade’s flash of insight provides some consolation to him as a human being struggling to make some sense out of the seeming randomness of life. But it also provides consolation to the reader of the novel in its underlying optimistic message that, as Hamlet discovered centuries before, “there’s a divinity that shapes our ends” (5.2.10)—that something beyond the physical realm exists, and that this assurance of something greater is reason enough to carry on with life. Nabokov’s decision to name the novel "Pale Fire," then, is a hopeful one, for it emphasizes the possibility of attaining any light on earth at all, rather than the futility of scorning pale reflections for their imperfection. Kinbote himself invokes the language of fire and light in the conclusion to the novel, when he writes, “My commentary to this poem…represents an attempt to sort out those echoes and wavelets of fire, and pale phosphorescent hints, and all the many subliminal debts to me” (297). Kinbote desires to excavate from the text of Shade’s poem any traces of his own influence. More important for this discussion of the novel’s title, however, is the strong parallel between Kinbote’s project and Shade’s insight about life. Whereas Shade hopes to find some “link-and-bobolink” in the “flimsy nonsense” that makes up everyday life, Kinbote strives to find his familiar Zemblan narrative within Shade’s work, which he himself views as otherwise meaningless. He complains that the poem is, “void of my magic, of that special rich streak of magical madness which I was sure would run through it and make it transcend its time” (296-7). Yet Kinbote does eventually find the “pale phosphorescent hints” of his own influence in Shade’s poem, even if the many instances that he cites are not convincing to anyone other than himself. In that sense, his creative powers as a literary critic, manifested in his long-winded and self-righteous commentary, provide exactly that “link-and-bobolink” necessary for extracting his own story from the thrum of Shade’s “rather old-fashioned narrative” (296). If Kinbote’s final product is just as much an act of creation as any other written work, then he is ultimately successful in his goal of establishing himself and Zembla in the literary tradition. His commentary synthesizes the seeming ordinariness of Shade’s poem with the magical story he longs to hear, and in the process, it organically recreates an entirely novel narrative. The fire that Kinbote had hoped Shade would fan into flames in his poem is actually manifested in the light of his own creation. Thus, the title “Pale Fire” is a wonderfully rich allusion to the threat of imitation and unoriginality that plagues literature, and indeed, artistic endeavors in general. While most writers desperately strive for complete originality, Nabokov’s novel seems to indicate that such a clear-cut notion of primacy is actually unrealistic. Virtually every literary tool, from allusion to symbolism to metaphor, is nothing but a pale reflection. This realization provokes one to question whether any original creation can exist, or whether man’s literary endeavors amount to nothing more than theft. Yet Nabokov avoids such a dismal conclusion by suggesting that the task of poetry is, despite the handicap of unoriginality, to attempt to navigate humanity through the “inky maze” of life to some transcendent destination. The pale fire of poetic creation alluded to by the title may be dim, but it is at least bright enough to illuminate the “message scribbled in the dark” that defines the human condition.
Sources Cited 1. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (New York: Random House, Inc., 1989). Citations are page numbers. 2. William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. From essay topics handout. Citations are of the form (Act.Scene.Line) 3. John Milton, Paradise Lost (New York: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., 1998). Citations are of the form (Book.Line) |