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From: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Pale Fire
Message-ID: <12563@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 00:30:55 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.12563
Posted: Sun Mar 23 00:30:55 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 03:22:41 EST
References: <12423@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1814@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
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Reply-To: gsmith@brahms.UUCP (Gene Ward Smith)
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In article <1814@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> mmar@sphinx.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) writes:

>Okay, Darkbloom fans:  What do you think, after all, of the *poem*
>"Pale Fire" (included in the *novel* _Pale Fire_).  Originally the general
>reaction was that it was pretty weak, which raised some tasty ironies about
>why Kinbote thinks it's good, and how Shade got to be so famous -- just
>one oozy step behind Frost.  Sometime in the seventies this trend in criticism
>turned around, and those commenting on the novel started to treat the poem
>as really pretty good in itself -- understood as a comic/ironic epic after
>Pope, say.
>    I think it's fun but still too much doggerel.  What say you?

     I think one of the marvelously clever things about "Pale Fire" is that
Shade's poem *is* much more than mere doggerel. It is resolutely anti-modern,
of course -- anything written in rhymed couplets would have to be. But it
isn't doggerel. It is a poem with touches of Frost, touches of Browning,
touches of Pushkin and probably Pope too, I guess. It is conversational
and self-revelatory, but the "self" which is revealed is an invention
of Nabokov, though at times he serves as a mouthpiece for V.N.'s thoughts.

     Kinbote's comments are consistently funny, of course. One of the 
few pieces of actual criticism on the poem is this:

     How to locate in the blackness, with a gasp,
     Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp.

which he calls "The loveliest couplet in this canto." In fact, this would
be close to doggerel except that it is ironic. The whole book is full of
wonderful multi-leveled irony; very Swiftian. Shade is in earnest about
things we laugh over, but is himself ironic. Kinbote's commentary carries
this process several steps farther.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
          "There are no differences but differences of degree 
            between degrees of difference and no difference"