THE NABOKOVIAN Notes (http://thenabokovian.org/nabokovian-new-notes/82-2022sp), 2022
Nabokov's PALE FIRE, as is well-known, is replete with literary allusions. This paper demonstrate... more Nabokov's PALE FIRE, as is well-known, is replete with literary allusions. This paper demonstrates, through an allusion to J.D. Salinger's FRANNY and ZOOEY, a seldom noticed dysfunctional dark side of PALE FIRE'S Shade family: Sybil Shade's inane proffering of a tangerine to her spiritually ailing daughter, Hazel. This sheds light on PALE FIRE's metaphysical meanings as likewise parallel to FRANNY and ZOOEY.
With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will... more With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist.” However, now, more than ever, it seems Kinbote is threatened by an even greater repressed unconscious, a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.” If Kinbote indeed suicides hors texte, as Nabokov claimed “he certainly did,” that would indicate, on the archetypal antithetic level, an “ego-death” of transcendence and transformation, that is, Jungian individuation. Has he, in death, managed to avoid this conflict? Who is this great looming shadow? The missing piece, the “masterpiece” for individuation is the contrasexual archetype, the anima. I suggest this is none other than Charles Kinbote’s most formidable antagonist, Sybil Shade, the spider at the center of PALE FIRE’s “web of sense.”
The child John Shade falls into transcendental unconsciousness at the sight of a wind-up tin toy,... more The child John Shade falls into transcendental unconsciousness at the sight of a wind-up tin toy, a Negro boy pushing a wheelbarrow. Charles Kinbote’s Negro gardener trundling his wheelbarrow is the last thing Professor John Shade sees as he completes his poem, just before his unexpected death. Kinbote, upon seeing the mechanical toy Shade kept as a “memento mori” declares that it shall work again because “I have the key” (C, 107). What is the key to this mysterious transcendental object, and how is it that Kinbote, not Shade, possesses it? What does it mean for it to work again? Why is the toy a gardener with a wheelbarrow, and why a Negro? And how does the mechanical toy relate to the living gardener? Above all, what is this curious dyad’s function in the text? It is not difficult to see that the correlation of the two corresponds to Nabokov’s persistent theme of potustoronnost; both episodes usher John Shade into the “beyond” – i.e. cosmic consciousness and death. This intimates a central importance for the novel, yet the seemingly minor character of the gardener (like an inconspicuous pawn ) has not garnered much notice. Nabokov’s most recondite and provocative novel, Pale Fire has multiple intersecting and spiraling themes, levels, allusions, and hidden ludic clues and feints. Nabokov has told us, via John Shade’s fountain/mountain epiphany (L, 698-802), that there is a “web of sense” in the novel’s elaborate texture (L 810). In this paper I will turn up the “underside” of the weave and pick up a number of thematic threads that intersect and converge, and match the pattern above and below into the elaborate design of the mechanical toy/gardener dyad. I suggest that the answers to the questions above and their import to an overarching theme, potustoronnost (or “transcendence,” as I prefer), may be found following nine thematic threads:
Themes and Threads:
(1.) Mysticism & Transcendence: (The major theme of Pale Fire, and most Nabokov works. Transcendence of “self,” of Death, and ultimately the transcendence inherent it Art, itself.) (2.) Death and Resurrection: (Correlates with “Mysticism & Transcendence but with a focus on Death.) (3.) Autobiography and Auto-Plagiarism: (Young Nabokov’s scarlet fever “cosmic swoon” and Older Nabokov’s trope of objects rolling uncontrollably out of sight) (4.) Literary Borrowing, Plagiarism, Cryptomnesia, & Parody: (Borrowed images of wheelbarrows, gardeners, Negroes, and Death.) (5.) Ludic Allusions: (Chess/Rooks, playing cards/Ace of Spades, Tarot/Magus) (6.) Jungian Archetypes: Parody and Allegory (Balthasar as the Jungian archetype of the “self”) (7.) Alchemy and Opposites: (Coniuntio oppositorum, Nigredo, The Ethiopian, fillius macrocosmi, “Dark Christ”) (8.) Secret Societies: (Hidden allusions to Freemasonry; the demiurge Ba’al)
The intention of this paper is not to offer an extra-literary schema of Jungian analysis or inter... more The intention of this paper is not to offer an extra-literary schema of Jungian analysis or interpretation of PALE FIRE, but to present credible evidence of Nabokov’s intentional use of the theories of Carl Jung as a major parodic and allegoric substrate of the novel. I look at the relationship of the three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, as the three main Jungian archetypal components of the psyche: the ego, persona, and shadow. These elements form the ‘Tri-part Man,’ a notion common to a number of metaphysical systems, but most clearly evinced in PALE Fire through psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and alchemy. Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, are archetypes as sub-personalities within the psyche of one man. That man, however, is not one of the three, but the three-in-one: the novel’s absent and enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin.
There is an unsolved mystery in Nabokov’s Pale Fire – the hiding place of
Zembla’s crown jewels. ... more There is an unsolved mystery in Nabokov’s Pale Fire – the hiding place of Zembla’s crown jewels. A closed loop in the index goes from “Crown Jewels,” which takes one to “Hiding place,” which refers to “Potaynik,” which in turn refers to “Taynik, Russ., secret place; see Crown Jewels.” Nabokov, when asked by the critic Alfred Appel Jr. for the location of Pale Fire’s crown jewels, offered an equally mystifying circumlocution: “In the ruins, sir, of some old barracks near Kobaltana (q.v.); but do not tell it to the Russians.” (SO, 92) Kobaltana is indeed listed in Pale Fire’s index as “a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the text.” This set-up makes clear that Nabokov wants us to play this game of hide-and-seek. One would expect that the reward of discovering the crown jewels would be more than a clever game; it should be a satisfying key to the novel. We shall see.
This paper is in support of my thesis of Jungian influences in Nabokov's "Pale Fire." The "man in... more This paper is in support of my thesis of Jungian influences in Nabokov's "Pale Fire." The "man in green" refers to the impish young instructor, Gerald Emerald, as "trickster" archetype; the "man in brown" to the dull, mechanical assassin, Jakob Gradus, as "shadow." These two disparate characters are antagonists of the insane protagonist, Charles Kinbote, and allies of fate for Kinbote's idolized and projected "persona," the poet John Shade.
Through Kinbote’s description of his rented “chateau,” we find that his landlord, Judge Hugh Warr... more Through Kinbote’s description of his rented “chateau,” we find that his landlord, Judge Hugh Warren Goldsworth is fond of order, alphabetically and otherwise, with instructive notes all around, and the systematic arranging of furniture by the path of the sun. This depiction of the judge is more than just an amusing anecdote—there are no throw away lines in Pale Fire. Why is this judge, this absent character, worth, or worthy of, gold? Why is he so meticulous? Why does he care about the path of the sun? Why, in fact is he a judge? This paper will answer those questions, focusing on the occult threads of alchemy, astrology and Tarot running through Vladimir Nabokov's recondite work, "Pale Fire."
The Vanessa atalanta butterfly flits mysteriously through Vladimir Nabokov's PALE FIRE. This pape... more The Vanessa atalanta butterfly flits mysteriously through Vladimir Nabokov's PALE FIRE. This paper takes a look at the butterfly's two eponymous names, Vanessa and Atalanta, which lead to mythological and alchemical associations. These two areas, alchemy and mythology were the basis of Jungian psychology. Both Vanessa and Atalanta evince Jung's theories of women who are dominated by their "animus", or subconscious masculine archetype. The main women of PALE FIRE are all of the animus dominated type which leads to difficulties with gender issues and psychological wholeness. Kinbote also has gender and psychologica issues is also associated with the Vanessa. All the characters associated with the butterfly are some way associated also with "doom".
Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls…
…the encounter with the shadow is the 'ap... more Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls… …the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development...that with the anima is the 'masterpiece .
This paper is part of a larger thesis, and assumes a prior reading of my paper, “The Tri-part Man: Archetype, Alchemy, & Allegory in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Part I.” In brief summary of that paper, I demonstrate that Pale Fire’s three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus are allegoric of the three main components of the psyche, the Jungian archetypes of ego, persona and shadow, respectively. The evidence for this interpretation is discovered on a level of metafictive space separate from the plot level. Employing Nabokov’s description of composing on a spiral of “thetic’ levels, I suggest that on the “thetic” plot level the characters are the unique individuals they appear to be (this includes Kinbote as a madman hallucinating himself as the King of Zembla). The parallel metafictive level, is the “antithetic” plane where allusion, metaphor and allegory combine to create a story reflecting the Jungian “Hero’s Journey” of individuation, Jung’s term for the realization of the true self through the confronting and subsuming of archetypes in the psyche. On the antithetic level the characters of Pale Fire are all archetypes within the mind of one person – the enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as authorial stand-in for Nabokov. The “Tri-part Man” was left ambiguous as to whether Botkin achieves a successful Jungian individuation. It appears that Kinbote, as ego, goes through all the steps of a “Hero’s Journey,” with one crucial exception - he does not seem to have successfully confronted his anima, the Jungian archetype of the inner feminine. As Jung states in the above epigram, confronting the anima is the “masterpiece” of individuation – the journey to psychic unification. According to Jung, the persona is the first and easiest archetype to confront and subsume, then the shadow, and then the anima. In Tri-Part Man I demonstrate that all was not as it seems chez Shade. John Shade, as Jungian persona, hides behind a mask; he drinks and he philanders behind the back of his dominating wife, Sybil. Gradus, as Jungian shadow, represents the archetype of everything dark, dirty and denied in the psyche. At the novel’s end, these two archetypal characters, persona and shadow, are dispatched in accordance with the order of the Jungian paradigm, yet Kinbote, persists in his egoism. With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist.” However, now, more than ever, it seems Kinbote is threatened by an even greater repressed unconscious, a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.” If Kinbote indeed suicides hors texte, as Nabokov claimed “he certainly did,” that would indicate, on the archetypal antithetic level, an “ego-death” of transcendence and transformation, that is, Jungian individuation. Has he, in death, managed to avoid this conflict? Who is this great looming shadow? The missing piece, the “masterpiece” for individuation is the contrasexual archetype, the anima. I suggest this is none other than Charles Kinbote’s most formidable antagonist, Sybil Shade, the spider at the center of Pale Fire’s “web of sense.” A hint is given of Sybil’s centrality as anima in the Jungian archetypal structure of Pale Fire in these lines from the commentary: Lines 939-940: Man's life, etc.
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece. (C, 207, my emphasis)
Nabokov seems to suggest that “unfinished masterpiece” is crucial to understanding the novel. I interpret this as going beyond the obvious reference to Shade’s unfinished poem. Psychologically from the Jungian paradigm, individuation is the goal of a man’s life and every small step leading up to self-realization could be considered a “footnote.” As in the above epigram, despite dispatching the minor series of “apprentice pieces,” the persona and the shadow, if work with the “masterpiece,” the anima, remains unaccomplished, then individuation in a man’s life cannot be complete. With Sybil as archetypal anima on the novel’s antithetic level, we will discover abundant clues whose conclusions lead to a synthesis with the thetic level – for a quite unexpected mystery story plot twist: Sybil as black widow spider, master-mind murderer of her mate. I propose to prove that Sybil, in cahoots with Kinbote, is the femme fatale behind John Shade’s murder. This may seem a surprising, even shocking, if not outright ridiculous Sherlock Holmesian conclusion. Yet, as we shall see, the allegoric Jungian substrate on the antithetic level ineluctably informs the thetic plot level for this metafictive synthetic conclusion. What is actually more surprising is to discover that, on the synthetic level Pale Fire is indeed a tacky detective mystery – and the very irony, the sublime ridiculousness of that is the revelation that this convoluted, masterful, multidimensional turn of events is indeed great Art.
This paper is an excerpt from a larger work-in-progress, tentatively titled, ‘ Archetype, Alchem... more This paper is an excerpt from a larger work-in-progress, tentatively titled, ‘ Archetype, Alchemy, and Art: The Jungian Substrate of Nabokov’s Pale Fire.’ My intention is not to offer an extra-literary schema of Jungian interpretation or analysis of Pale Fire, but to present credible evidence of Nabokov’s intentional use of the theories of Carl Jung as a major parodic and allegoric substrate of the novel. Here I look at the relationship of the three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, as the three main Jungian archetypal components of the psyche: the ego, persona, and shadow. The relationship between John Shade and Charles Kinbote, as the two main characters of Pale Fire, has been a point of scholarly contention since Vladimir Nabokov’s elaborately cryptic novel was published in 1962. The trope of the ‘double’ as dissociated personality is usually cited, with arguments over which character is the real and which imagined. I argue that the much-contested identity of the fictional author of both Pale Fire’s poem and commentary has generally been based on two fallacies: (1) basing a solution on the common literary trope of the ‘double,’ and (2) attempting to solve the question from the ‘thetic’ text level. The question of the double is moot on the thetic text level; there remain too many logical contradictions between poem and commentary and time/space inconsistencies. It can only be resolved by a quantum leap to the higher antithetic level of thematic texture. The tri-part Jungian model is a more accurate and elegant solution to the characters’ relationships and the novel’s thematic cohesion. I will be looking at the three characters as virtual equals, as archetypes of the three parts of the psyche: ego conscious, higher conscious and lower conscious. These elements form the ‘Tri-part Man,’ a notion common to many metaphysical systems, but most evinced in Pale Fire through psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and alchemy. Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, clearly indicate the attributes of Jung’s ego, persona and shadow archetypes as sub-personalities within the psyche of one man. That man, however, is not one of the three, but the three-in-one: the novel’s absent and enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as stand-in for Nabokov. Botkin’s metaphysical quest for transcendence is an allegory presented in the form of Jungian individuation. Per Nabokov’s stated method of composing in “thetic spirals” (thetic, antithetic and synthetic) the play-out of the drama of the archetypes takes place on a separate level of fictive space parallel to the text (thetic) level. At this parallel (antithetic) level of themes, parody, allusions, and allegory, the characters’ relationships and motivations are revealed through the Jungian archetypes. Thus archetypal characters enact the drama of Jungian “individuation,” the unification of the transcendent self through the confrontation and assimilation of the archetypes into consciousness. The metanarrative, as evinced by the archetypes and individuation, is the novel’s triple theme of transcendence – of death (Gradus), of ego (Kinbote), and ultimately of art (Shade).
This paper presumes knowledge of the novel and the prior debates.
This paper, "Kinbote's Hero's Journey" is part of my larger thesis "Alchemy, Archetype and Art: J... more This paper, "Kinbote's Hero's Journey" is part of my larger thesis "Alchemy, Archetype and Art: Jungian Influences in Nabokov's Pale Fire."
Employing quotes from the Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces" I trace the delusional Charles Kinbote, aka King Charles II of Zembla, through his travels and travails through the "mirror of exile" from his distant northern land to America. I maintain that this is Nabokov's intentional parody, not simply an interpretation
THE NABOKOVIAN Notes (http://thenabokovian.org/nabokovian-new-notes/82-2022sp), 2022
Nabokov's PALE FIRE, as is well-known, is replete with literary allusions. This paper demonstrate... more Nabokov's PALE FIRE, as is well-known, is replete with literary allusions. This paper demonstrates, through an allusion to J.D. Salinger's FRANNY and ZOOEY, a seldom noticed dysfunctional dark side of PALE FIRE'S Shade family: Sybil Shade's inane proffering of a tangerine to her spiritually ailing daughter, Hazel. This sheds light on PALE FIRE's metaphysical meanings as likewise parallel to FRANNY and ZOOEY.
With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will... more With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist.” However, now, more than ever, it seems Kinbote is threatened by an even greater repressed unconscious, a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.” If Kinbote indeed suicides hors texte, as Nabokov claimed “he certainly did,” that would indicate, on the archetypal antithetic level, an “ego-death” of transcendence and transformation, that is, Jungian individuation. Has he, in death, managed to avoid this conflict? Who is this great looming shadow? The missing piece, the “masterpiece” for individuation is the contrasexual archetype, the anima. I suggest this is none other than Charles Kinbote’s most formidable antagonist, Sybil Shade, the spider at the center of PALE FIRE’s “web of sense.”
The child John Shade falls into transcendental unconsciousness at the sight of a wind-up tin toy,... more The child John Shade falls into transcendental unconsciousness at the sight of a wind-up tin toy, a Negro boy pushing a wheelbarrow. Charles Kinbote’s Negro gardener trundling his wheelbarrow is the last thing Professor John Shade sees as he completes his poem, just before his unexpected death. Kinbote, upon seeing the mechanical toy Shade kept as a “memento mori” declares that it shall work again because “I have the key” (C, 107). What is the key to this mysterious transcendental object, and how is it that Kinbote, not Shade, possesses it? What does it mean for it to work again? Why is the toy a gardener with a wheelbarrow, and why a Negro? And how does the mechanical toy relate to the living gardener? Above all, what is this curious dyad’s function in the text? It is not difficult to see that the correlation of the two corresponds to Nabokov’s persistent theme of potustoronnost; both episodes usher John Shade into the “beyond” – i.e. cosmic consciousness and death. This intimates a central importance for the novel, yet the seemingly minor character of the gardener (like an inconspicuous pawn ) has not garnered much notice. Nabokov’s most recondite and provocative novel, Pale Fire has multiple intersecting and spiraling themes, levels, allusions, and hidden ludic clues and feints. Nabokov has told us, via John Shade’s fountain/mountain epiphany (L, 698-802), that there is a “web of sense” in the novel’s elaborate texture (L 810). In this paper I will turn up the “underside” of the weave and pick up a number of thematic threads that intersect and converge, and match the pattern above and below into the elaborate design of the mechanical toy/gardener dyad. I suggest that the answers to the questions above and their import to an overarching theme, potustoronnost (or “transcendence,” as I prefer), may be found following nine thematic threads:
Themes and Threads:
(1.) Mysticism & Transcendence: (The major theme of Pale Fire, and most Nabokov works. Transcendence of “self,” of Death, and ultimately the transcendence inherent it Art, itself.) (2.) Death and Resurrection: (Correlates with “Mysticism & Transcendence but with a focus on Death.) (3.) Autobiography and Auto-Plagiarism: (Young Nabokov’s scarlet fever “cosmic swoon” and Older Nabokov’s trope of objects rolling uncontrollably out of sight) (4.) Literary Borrowing, Plagiarism, Cryptomnesia, & Parody: (Borrowed images of wheelbarrows, gardeners, Negroes, and Death.) (5.) Ludic Allusions: (Chess/Rooks, playing cards/Ace of Spades, Tarot/Magus) (6.) Jungian Archetypes: Parody and Allegory (Balthasar as the Jungian archetype of the “self”) (7.) Alchemy and Opposites: (Coniuntio oppositorum, Nigredo, The Ethiopian, fillius macrocosmi, “Dark Christ”) (8.) Secret Societies: (Hidden allusions to Freemasonry; the demiurge Ba’al)
The intention of this paper is not to offer an extra-literary schema of Jungian analysis or inter... more The intention of this paper is not to offer an extra-literary schema of Jungian analysis or interpretation of PALE FIRE, but to present credible evidence of Nabokov’s intentional use of the theories of Carl Jung as a major parodic and allegoric substrate of the novel. I look at the relationship of the three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, as the three main Jungian archetypal components of the psyche: the ego, persona, and shadow. These elements form the ‘Tri-part Man,’ a notion common to a number of metaphysical systems, but most clearly evinced in PALE Fire through psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and alchemy. Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, are archetypes as sub-personalities within the psyche of one man. That man, however, is not one of the three, but the three-in-one: the novel’s absent and enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin.
There is an unsolved mystery in Nabokov’s Pale Fire – the hiding place of
Zembla’s crown jewels. ... more There is an unsolved mystery in Nabokov’s Pale Fire – the hiding place of Zembla’s crown jewels. A closed loop in the index goes from “Crown Jewels,” which takes one to “Hiding place,” which refers to “Potaynik,” which in turn refers to “Taynik, Russ., secret place; see Crown Jewels.” Nabokov, when asked by the critic Alfred Appel Jr. for the location of Pale Fire’s crown jewels, offered an equally mystifying circumlocution: “In the ruins, sir, of some old barracks near Kobaltana (q.v.); but do not tell it to the Russians.” (SO, 92) Kobaltana is indeed listed in Pale Fire’s index as “a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the text.” This set-up makes clear that Nabokov wants us to play this game of hide-and-seek. One would expect that the reward of discovering the crown jewels would be more than a clever game; it should be a satisfying key to the novel. We shall see.
This paper is in support of my thesis of Jungian influences in Nabokov's "Pale Fire." The "man in... more This paper is in support of my thesis of Jungian influences in Nabokov's "Pale Fire." The "man in green" refers to the impish young instructor, Gerald Emerald, as "trickster" archetype; the "man in brown" to the dull, mechanical assassin, Jakob Gradus, as "shadow." These two disparate characters are antagonists of the insane protagonist, Charles Kinbote, and allies of fate for Kinbote's idolized and projected "persona," the poet John Shade.
Through Kinbote’s description of his rented “chateau,” we find that his landlord, Judge Hugh Warr... more Through Kinbote’s description of his rented “chateau,” we find that his landlord, Judge Hugh Warren Goldsworth is fond of order, alphabetically and otherwise, with instructive notes all around, and the systematic arranging of furniture by the path of the sun. This depiction of the judge is more than just an amusing anecdote—there are no throw away lines in Pale Fire. Why is this judge, this absent character, worth, or worthy of, gold? Why is he so meticulous? Why does he care about the path of the sun? Why, in fact is he a judge? This paper will answer those questions, focusing on the occult threads of alchemy, astrology and Tarot running through Vladimir Nabokov's recondite work, "Pale Fire."
The Vanessa atalanta butterfly flits mysteriously through Vladimir Nabokov's PALE FIRE. This pape... more The Vanessa atalanta butterfly flits mysteriously through Vladimir Nabokov's PALE FIRE. This paper takes a look at the butterfly's two eponymous names, Vanessa and Atalanta, which lead to mythological and alchemical associations. These two areas, alchemy and mythology were the basis of Jungian psychology. Both Vanessa and Atalanta evince Jung's theories of women who are dominated by their "animus", or subconscious masculine archetype. The main women of PALE FIRE are all of the animus dominated type which leads to difficulties with gender issues and psychological wholeness. Kinbote also has gender and psychologica issues is also associated with the Vanessa. All the characters associated with the butterfly are some way associated also with "doom".
Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls…
…the encounter with the shadow is the 'ap... more Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls… …the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development...that with the anima is the 'masterpiece .
This paper is part of a larger thesis, and assumes a prior reading of my paper, “The Tri-part Man: Archetype, Alchemy, & Allegory in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Part I.” In brief summary of that paper, I demonstrate that Pale Fire’s three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus are allegoric of the three main components of the psyche, the Jungian archetypes of ego, persona and shadow, respectively. The evidence for this interpretation is discovered on a level of metafictive space separate from the plot level. Employing Nabokov’s description of composing on a spiral of “thetic’ levels, I suggest that on the “thetic” plot level the characters are the unique individuals they appear to be (this includes Kinbote as a madman hallucinating himself as the King of Zembla). The parallel metafictive level, is the “antithetic” plane where allusion, metaphor and allegory combine to create a story reflecting the Jungian “Hero’s Journey” of individuation, Jung’s term for the realization of the true self through the confronting and subsuming of archetypes in the psyche. On the antithetic level the characters of Pale Fire are all archetypes within the mind of one person – the enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as authorial stand-in for Nabokov. The “Tri-part Man” was left ambiguous as to whether Botkin achieves a successful Jungian individuation. It appears that Kinbote, as ego, goes through all the steps of a “Hero’s Journey,” with one crucial exception - he does not seem to have successfully confronted his anima, the Jungian archetype of the inner feminine. As Jung states in the above epigram, confronting the anima is the “masterpiece” of individuation – the journey to psychic unification. According to Jung, the persona is the first and easiest archetype to confront and subsume, then the shadow, and then the anima. In Tri-Part Man I demonstrate that all was not as it seems chez Shade. John Shade, as Jungian persona, hides behind a mask; he drinks and he philanders behind the back of his dominating wife, Sybil. Gradus, as Jungian shadow, represents the archetype of everything dark, dirty and denied in the psyche. At the novel’s end, these two archetypal characters, persona and shadow, are dispatched in accordance with the order of the Jungian paradigm, yet Kinbote, persists in his egoism. With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist.” However, now, more than ever, it seems Kinbote is threatened by an even greater repressed unconscious, a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.” If Kinbote indeed suicides hors texte, as Nabokov claimed “he certainly did,” that would indicate, on the archetypal antithetic level, an “ego-death” of transcendence and transformation, that is, Jungian individuation. Has he, in death, managed to avoid this conflict? Who is this great looming shadow? The missing piece, the “masterpiece” for individuation is the contrasexual archetype, the anima. I suggest this is none other than Charles Kinbote’s most formidable antagonist, Sybil Shade, the spider at the center of Pale Fire’s “web of sense.” A hint is given of Sybil’s centrality as anima in the Jungian archetypal structure of Pale Fire in these lines from the commentary: Lines 939-940: Man's life, etc.
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece. (C, 207, my emphasis)
Nabokov seems to suggest that “unfinished masterpiece” is crucial to understanding the novel. I interpret this as going beyond the obvious reference to Shade’s unfinished poem. Psychologically from the Jungian paradigm, individuation is the goal of a man’s life and every small step leading up to self-realization could be considered a “footnote.” As in the above epigram, despite dispatching the minor series of “apprentice pieces,” the persona and the shadow, if work with the “masterpiece,” the anima, remains unaccomplished, then individuation in a man’s life cannot be complete. With Sybil as archetypal anima on the novel’s antithetic level, we will discover abundant clues whose conclusions lead to a synthesis with the thetic level – for a quite unexpected mystery story plot twist: Sybil as black widow spider, master-mind murderer of her mate. I propose to prove that Sybil, in cahoots with Kinbote, is the femme fatale behind John Shade’s murder. This may seem a surprising, even shocking, if not outright ridiculous Sherlock Holmesian conclusion. Yet, as we shall see, the allegoric Jungian substrate on the antithetic level ineluctably informs the thetic plot level for this metafictive synthetic conclusion. What is actually more surprising is to discover that, on the synthetic level Pale Fire is indeed a tacky detective mystery – and the very irony, the sublime ridiculousness of that is the revelation that this convoluted, masterful, multidimensional turn of events is indeed great Art.
This paper is an excerpt from a larger work-in-progress, tentatively titled, ‘ Archetype, Alchem... more This paper is an excerpt from a larger work-in-progress, tentatively titled, ‘ Archetype, Alchemy, and Art: The Jungian Substrate of Nabokov’s Pale Fire.’ My intention is not to offer an extra-literary schema of Jungian interpretation or analysis of Pale Fire, but to present credible evidence of Nabokov’s intentional use of the theories of Carl Jung as a major parodic and allegoric substrate of the novel. Here I look at the relationship of the three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, as the three main Jungian archetypal components of the psyche: the ego, persona, and shadow. The relationship between John Shade and Charles Kinbote, as the two main characters of Pale Fire, has been a point of scholarly contention since Vladimir Nabokov’s elaborately cryptic novel was published in 1962. The trope of the ‘double’ as dissociated personality is usually cited, with arguments over which character is the real and which imagined. I argue that the much-contested identity of the fictional author of both Pale Fire’s poem and commentary has generally been based on two fallacies: (1) basing a solution on the common literary trope of the ‘double,’ and (2) attempting to solve the question from the ‘thetic’ text level. The question of the double is moot on the thetic text level; there remain too many logical contradictions between poem and commentary and time/space inconsistencies. It can only be resolved by a quantum leap to the higher antithetic level of thematic texture. The tri-part Jungian model is a more accurate and elegant solution to the characters’ relationships and the novel’s thematic cohesion. I will be looking at the three characters as virtual equals, as archetypes of the three parts of the psyche: ego conscious, higher conscious and lower conscious. These elements form the ‘Tri-part Man,’ a notion common to many metaphysical systems, but most evinced in Pale Fire through psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and alchemy. Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, clearly indicate the attributes of Jung’s ego, persona and shadow archetypes as sub-personalities within the psyche of one man. That man, however, is not one of the three, but the three-in-one: the novel’s absent and enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as stand-in for Nabokov. Botkin’s metaphysical quest for transcendence is an allegory presented in the form of Jungian individuation. Per Nabokov’s stated method of composing in “thetic spirals” (thetic, antithetic and synthetic) the play-out of the drama of the archetypes takes place on a separate level of fictive space parallel to the text (thetic) level. At this parallel (antithetic) level of themes, parody, allusions, and allegory, the characters’ relationships and motivations are revealed through the Jungian archetypes. Thus archetypal characters enact the drama of Jungian “individuation,” the unification of the transcendent self through the confrontation and assimilation of the archetypes into consciousness. The metanarrative, as evinced by the archetypes and individuation, is the novel’s triple theme of transcendence – of death (Gradus), of ego (Kinbote), and ultimately of art (Shade).
This paper presumes knowledge of the novel and the prior debates.
This paper, "Kinbote's Hero's Journey" is part of my larger thesis "Alchemy, Archetype and Art: J... more This paper, "Kinbote's Hero's Journey" is part of my larger thesis "Alchemy, Archetype and Art: Jungian Influences in Nabokov's Pale Fire."
Employing quotes from the Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces" I trace the delusional Charles Kinbote, aka King Charles II of Zembla, through his travels and travails through the "mirror of exile" from his distant northern land to America. I maintain that this is Nabokov's intentional parody, not simply an interpretation
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Papers by Mary Ross
It is not difficult to see that the correlation of the two corresponds to Nabokov’s persistent theme of potustoronnost; both episodes usher John Shade into the “beyond” – i.e. cosmic consciousness and death. This intimates a central importance for the novel, yet the seemingly minor character of the gardener (like an inconspicuous pawn ) has not garnered much notice.
Nabokov’s most recondite and provocative novel, Pale Fire has multiple intersecting and spiraling themes, levels, allusions, and hidden ludic clues and feints. Nabokov has told us, via John Shade’s fountain/mountain epiphany (L, 698-802), that there is a “web of sense” in the novel’s elaborate texture (L 810). In this paper I will turn up the “underside” of the weave and pick up a number of thematic threads that intersect and converge, and match the pattern above and below into the elaborate design of the mechanical toy/gardener dyad. I suggest that the answers to the questions above and their import to an overarching theme, potustoronnost (or “transcendence,” as I prefer), may be found following nine thematic threads:
Themes and Threads:
(1.) Mysticism & Transcendence: (The major theme of Pale Fire, and most Nabokov works. Transcendence of “self,” of Death, and ultimately the transcendence inherent it Art, itself.)
(2.) Death and Resurrection: (Correlates with “Mysticism & Transcendence but with a focus on Death.)
(3.) Autobiography and Auto-Plagiarism: (Young Nabokov’s scarlet fever “cosmic swoon” and Older Nabokov’s trope of objects rolling uncontrollably out of sight)
(4.) Literary Borrowing, Plagiarism, Cryptomnesia, & Parody: (Borrowed images of wheelbarrows, gardeners, Negroes, and Death.)
(5.) Ludic Allusions: (Chess/Rooks, playing cards/Ace of Spades, Tarot/Magus)
(6.) Jungian Archetypes: Parody and Allegory (Balthasar as the Jungian archetype of the “self”)
(7.) Alchemy and Opposites: (Coniuntio oppositorum, Nigredo, The Ethiopian, fillius macrocosmi, “Dark Christ”)
(8.) Secret Societies: (Hidden allusions to Freemasonry; the demiurge Ba’al)
Zembla’s crown jewels. A closed loop in the index goes from “Crown Jewels,” which
takes one to “Hiding place,” which refers to “Potaynik,” which in turn refers to “Taynik,
Russ., secret place; see Crown Jewels.” Nabokov, when asked by the critic Alfred Appel
Jr. for the location of Pale Fire’s crown jewels, offered an equally mystifying
circumlocution: “In the ruins, sir, of some old barracks near Kobaltana (q.v.); but do not
tell it to the Russians.” (SO, 92) Kobaltana is indeed listed in Pale Fire’s index as “a
once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold and
desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military
families and forest castles, not in the text.” This set-up makes clear that Nabokov wants
us to play this game of hide-and-seek. One would expect that the reward of discovering
the crown jewels would be more than a clever game; it should be a satisfying key to the
novel. We shall see.
(A shorter version of this appeared in The Nabokovian 79 https://thenabokovian.org/node/51156
Drafts by Mary Ross
…the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development...that with the anima is the 'masterpiece .
This paper is part of a larger thesis, and assumes a prior reading of my paper, “The Tri-part Man: Archetype, Alchemy, & Allegory in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Part I.” In brief summary of that paper, I demonstrate that Pale Fire’s three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus are allegoric of the three main components of the psyche, the Jungian archetypes of ego, persona and shadow, respectively. The evidence for this interpretation is discovered on a level of metafictive space separate from the plot level. Employing Nabokov’s description of composing on a spiral of “thetic’ levels, I suggest that on the “thetic” plot level the characters are the unique individuals they appear to be (this includes Kinbote as a madman hallucinating himself as the King of Zembla). The parallel metafictive level, is the “antithetic” plane where allusion, metaphor and allegory combine to create a story reflecting the Jungian “Hero’s Journey” of individuation, Jung’s term for the realization of the true self through the confronting and subsuming of archetypes in the psyche. On the antithetic level the characters of Pale Fire are all archetypes within the mind of one person – the enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as authorial stand-in for Nabokov.
The “Tri-part Man” was left ambiguous as to whether Botkin achieves a successful Jungian individuation. It appears that Kinbote, as ego, goes through all the steps of a “Hero’s Journey,” with one crucial exception - he does not seem to have successfully confronted his anima, the Jungian archetype of the inner feminine. As Jung states in the above epigram, confronting the anima is the “masterpiece” of individuation – the journey to psychic unification. According to Jung, the persona is the first and easiest archetype to confront and subsume, then the shadow, and then the anima. In Tri-Part Man I demonstrate that all was not as it seems chez Shade. John Shade, as Jungian persona, hides behind a mask; he drinks and he philanders behind the back of his dominating wife, Sybil. Gradus, as Jungian shadow, represents the archetype of everything dark, dirty and denied in the psyche. At the novel’s end, these two archetypal characters, persona and shadow, are dispatched in accordance with the order of the Jungian paradigm, yet Kinbote, persists in his egoism.
With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist.” However, now, more than ever, it seems Kinbote is threatened by an even greater repressed unconscious, a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.” If Kinbote indeed suicides hors texte, as Nabokov claimed “he certainly did,” that would indicate, on the archetypal antithetic level, an “ego-death” of transcendence and transformation, that is, Jungian individuation. Has he, in death, managed to avoid this conflict? Who is this great looming shadow? The missing piece, the “masterpiece” for individuation is the contrasexual archetype, the anima. I suggest this is none other than Charles Kinbote’s most formidable antagonist, Sybil Shade, the spider at the center of Pale Fire’s “web of sense.”
A hint is given of Sybil’s centrality as anima in the Jungian archetypal structure of Pale Fire in these lines from the commentary:
Lines 939-940: Man's life, etc.
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece. (C, 207, my emphasis)
Nabokov seems to suggest that “unfinished masterpiece” is crucial to understanding the novel. I interpret this as going beyond the obvious reference to Shade’s unfinished poem. Psychologically from the Jungian paradigm, individuation is the goal of a man’s life and every small step leading up to self-realization could be considered a “footnote.” As in the above epigram, despite dispatching the minor series of “apprentice pieces,” the persona and the shadow, if work with the “masterpiece,” the anima, remains unaccomplished, then individuation in a man’s life cannot be complete.
With Sybil as archetypal anima on the novel’s antithetic level, we will discover abundant clues whose conclusions lead to a synthesis with the thetic level – for a quite unexpected mystery story plot twist: Sybil as black widow spider, master-mind murderer of her mate. I propose to prove that Sybil, in cahoots with Kinbote, is the femme fatale behind John Shade’s murder. This may seem a surprising, even shocking, if not outright ridiculous Sherlock Holmesian conclusion. Yet, as we shall see, the allegoric Jungian substrate on the antithetic level ineluctably informs the thetic plot level for this metafictive synthetic conclusion. What is actually more surprising is to discover that, on the synthetic level Pale Fire is indeed a tacky detective mystery – and the very irony, the sublime ridiculousness of that is the revelation that this convoluted, masterful, multidimensional turn of events is indeed great Art.
The relationship between John Shade and Charles Kinbote, as the two main characters of Pale Fire, has been a point of scholarly contention since Vladimir Nabokov’s elaborately cryptic novel was published in 1962. The trope of the ‘double’ as dissociated personality is usually cited, with arguments over which character is the real and which imagined. I argue that the much-contested identity of the fictional author of both Pale Fire’s poem and commentary has generally been based on two fallacies: (1) basing a solution on the common literary trope of the ‘double,’ and (2) attempting to solve the question from the ‘thetic’ text level. The question of the double is moot on the thetic text level; there remain too many logical contradictions between poem and commentary and time/space inconsistencies. It can only be resolved by a quantum leap to the higher antithetic level of thematic texture. The tri-part Jungian model is a more accurate and elegant solution to the characters’ relationships and the novel’s thematic cohesion.
I will be looking at the three characters as virtual equals, as archetypes of the three parts of the psyche: ego conscious, higher conscious and lower conscious. These elements form the ‘Tri-part Man,’ a notion common to many metaphysical systems, but most evinced in Pale Fire through psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and alchemy. Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, clearly indicate the attributes of Jung’s ego, persona and shadow archetypes as sub-personalities within the psyche of one man. That man, however, is not one of the three, but the three-in-one: the novel’s absent and enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as stand-in for Nabokov. Botkin’s metaphysical quest for transcendence is an allegory presented in the form of Jungian individuation.
Per Nabokov’s stated method of composing in “thetic spirals” (thetic, antithetic and synthetic) the play-out of the drama of the archetypes takes place on a separate level of fictive space parallel to the text (thetic) level. At this parallel (antithetic) level of themes, parody, allusions, and allegory, the characters’ relationships and motivations are revealed through the Jungian archetypes. Thus archetypal characters enact the drama of Jungian “individuation,” the unification of the transcendent self through the confrontation and assimilation of the archetypes into consciousness. The metanarrative, as evinced by the archetypes and individuation, is the novel’s triple theme of transcendence – of death (Gradus), of ego (Kinbote), and ultimately of art (Shade).
This paper presumes knowledge of the novel and the prior debates.
Employing quotes from the Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces" I trace the delusional Charles Kinbote, aka King Charles II of Zembla, through his travels and travails through the "mirror of exile" from his distant northern land to America. I maintain that this is Nabokov's intentional parody, not simply an interpretation
Peer-Reviewed Publications by Mary Ross
It is not difficult to see that the correlation of the two corresponds to Nabokov’s persistent theme of potustoronnost; both episodes usher John Shade into the “beyond” – i.e. cosmic consciousness and death. This intimates a central importance for the novel, yet the seemingly minor character of the gardener (like an inconspicuous pawn ) has not garnered much notice.
Nabokov’s most recondite and provocative novel, Pale Fire has multiple intersecting and spiraling themes, levels, allusions, and hidden ludic clues and feints. Nabokov has told us, via John Shade’s fountain/mountain epiphany (L, 698-802), that there is a “web of sense” in the novel’s elaborate texture (L 810). In this paper I will turn up the “underside” of the weave and pick up a number of thematic threads that intersect and converge, and match the pattern above and below into the elaborate design of the mechanical toy/gardener dyad. I suggest that the answers to the questions above and their import to an overarching theme, potustoronnost (or “transcendence,” as I prefer), may be found following nine thematic threads:
Themes and Threads:
(1.) Mysticism & Transcendence: (The major theme of Pale Fire, and most Nabokov works. Transcendence of “self,” of Death, and ultimately the transcendence inherent it Art, itself.)
(2.) Death and Resurrection: (Correlates with “Mysticism & Transcendence but with a focus on Death.)
(3.) Autobiography and Auto-Plagiarism: (Young Nabokov’s scarlet fever “cosmic swoon” and Older Nabokov’s trope of objects rolling uncontrollably out of sight)
(4.) Literary Borrowing, Plagiarism, Cryptomnesia, & Parody: (Borrowed images of wheelbarrows, gardeners, Negroes, and Death.)
(5.) Ludic Allusions: (Chess/Rooks, playing cards/Ace of Spades, Tarot/Magus)
(6.) Jungian Archetypes: Parody and Allegory (Balthasar as the Jungian archetype of the “self”)
(7.) Alchemy and Opposites: (Coniuntio oppositorum, Nigredo, The Ethiopian, fillius macrocosmi, “Dark Christ”)
(8.) Secret Societies: (Hidden allusions to Freemasonry; the demiurge Ba’al)
Zembla’s crown jewels. A closed loop in the index goes from “Crown Jewels,” which
takes one to “Hiding place,” which refers to “Potaynik,” which in turn refers to “Taynik,
Russ., secret place; see Crown Jewels.” Nabokov, when asked by the critic Alfred Appel
Jr. for the location of Pale Fire’s crown jewels, offered an equally mystifying
circumlocution: “In the ruins, sir, of some old barracks near Kobaltana (q.v.); but do not
tell it to the Russians.” (SO, 92) Kobaltana is indeed listed in Pale Fire’s index as “a
once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold and
desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military
families and forest castles, not in the text.” This set-up makes clear that Nabokov wants
us to play this game of hide-and-seek. One would expect that the reward of discovering
the crown jewels would be more than a clever game; it should be a satisfying key to the
novel. We shall see.
(A shorter version of this appeared in The Nabokovian 79 https://thenabokovian.org/node/51156
…the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development...that with the anima is the 'masterpiece .
This paper is part of a larger thesis, and assumes a prior reading of my paper, “The Tri-part Man: Archetype, Alchemy, & Allegory in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Part I.” In brief summary of that paper, I demonstrate that Pale Fire’s three main characters, Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus are allegoric of the three main components of the psyche, the Jungian archetypes of ego, persona and shadow, respectively. The evidence for this interpretation is discovered on a level of metafictive space separate from the plot level. Employing Nabokov’s description of composing on a spiral of “thetic’ levels, I suggest that on the “thetic” plot level the characters are the unique individuals they appear to be (this includes Kinbote as a madman hallucinating himself as the King of Zembla). The parallel metafictive level, is the “antithetic” plane where allusion, metaphor and allegory combine to create a story reflecting the Jungian “Hero’s Journey” of individuation, Jung’s term for the realization of the true self through the confronting and subsuming of archetypes in the psyche. On the antithetic level the characters of Pale Fire are all archetypes within the mind of one person – the enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as authorial stand-in for Nabokov.
The “Tri-part Man” was left ambiguous as to whether Botkin achieves a successful Jungian individuation. It appears that Kinbote, as ego, goes through all the steps of a “Hero’s Journey,” with one crucial exception - he does not seem to have successfully confronted his anima, the Jungian archetype of the inner feminine. As Jung states in the above epigram, confronting the anima is the “masterpiece” of individuation – the journey to psychic unification. According to Jung, the persona is the first and easiest archetype to confront and subsume, then the shadow, and then the anima. In Tri-Part Man I demonstrate that all was not as it seems chez Shade. John Shade, as Jungian persona, hides behind a mask; he drinks and he philanders behind the back of his dominating wife, Sybil. Gradus, as Jungian shadow, represents the archetype of everything dark, dirty and denied in the psyche. At the novel’s end, these two archetypal characters, persona and shadow, are dispatched in accordance with the order of the Jungian paradigm, yet Kinbote, persists in his egoism.
With both his vaunted persona (Shade) and his vile shadow (Gradus) dead, Kinbote cries, “God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist.” However, now, more than ever, it seems Kinbote is threatened by an even greater repressed unconscious, a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.” If Kinbote indeed suicides hors texte, as Nabokov claimed “he certainly did,” that would indicate, on the archetypal antithetic level, an “ego-death” of transcendence and transformation, that is, Jungian individuation. Has he, in death, managed to avoid this conflict? Who is this great looming shadow? The missing piece, the “masterpiece” for individuation is the contrasexual archetype, the anima. I suggest this is none other than Charles Kinbote’s most formidable antagonist, Sybil Shade, the spider at the center of Pale Fire’s “web of sense.”
A hint is given of Sybil’s centrality as anima in the Jungian archetypal structure of Pale Fire in these lines from the commentary:
Lines 939-940: Man's life, etc.
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece. (C, 207, my emphasis)
Nabokov seems to suggest that “unfinished masterpiece” is crucial to understanding the novel. I interpret this as going beyond the obvious reference to Shade’s unfinished poem. Psychologically from the Jungian paradigm, individuation is the goal of a man’s life and every small step leading up to self-realization could be considered a “footnote.” As in the above epigram, despite dispatching the minor series of “apprentice pieces,” the persona and the shadow, if work with the “masterpiece,” the anima, remains unaccomplished, then individuation in a man’s life cannot be complete.
With Sybil as archetypal anima on the novel’s antithetic level, we will discover abundant clues whose conclusions lead to a synthesis with the thetic level – for a quite unexpected mystery story plot twist: Sybil as black widow spider, master-mind murderer of her mate. I propose to prove that Sybil, in cahoots with Kinbote, is the femme fatale behind John Shade’s murder. This may seem a surprising, even shocking, if not outright ridiculous Sherlock Holmesian conclusion. Yet, as we shall see, the allegoric Jungian substrate on the antithetic level ineluctably informs the thetic plot level for this metafictive synthetic conclusion. What is actually more surprising is to discover that, on the synthetic level Pale Fire is indeed a tacky detective mystery – and the very irony, the sublime ridiculousness of that is the revelation that this convoluted, masterful, multidimensional turn of events is indeed great Art.
The relationship between John Shade and Charles Kinbote, as the two main characters of Pale Fire, has been a point of scholarly contention since Vladimir Nabokov’s elaborately cryptic novel was published in 1962. The trope of the ‘double’ as dissociated personality is usually cited, with arguments over which character is the real and which imagined. I argue that the much-contested identity of the fictional author of both Pale Fire’s poem and commentary has generally been based on two fallacies: (1) basing a solution on the common literary trope of the ‘double,’ and (2) attempting to solve the question from the ‘thetic’ text level. The question of the double is moot on the thetic text level; there remain too many logical contradictions between poem and commentary and time/space inconsistencies. It can only be resolved by a quantum leap to the higher antithetic level of thematic texture. The tri-part Jungian model is a more accurate and elegant solution to the characters’ relationships and the novel’s thematic cohesion.
I will be looking at the three characters as virtual equals, as archetypes of the three parts of the psyche: ego conscious, higher conscious and lower conscious. These elements form the ‘Tri-part Man,’ a notion common to many metaphysical systems, but most evinced in Pale Fire through psychologist Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and alchemy. Kinbote, Shade, and Gradus, clearly indicate the attributes of Jung’s ego, persona and shadow archetypes as sub-personalities within the psyche of one man. That man, however, is not one of the three, but the three-in-one: the novel’s absent and enigmatic cipher, Professor V. Botkin, as stand-in for Nabokov. Botkin’s metaphysical quest for transcendence is an allegory presented in the form of Jungian individuation.
Per Nabokov’s stated method of composing in “thetic spirals” (thetic, antithetic and synthetic) the play-out of the drama of the archetypes takes place on a separate level of fictive space parallel to the text (thetic) level. At this parallel (antithetic) level of themes, parody, allusions, and allegory, the characters’ relationships and motivations are revealed through the Jungian archetypes. Thus archetypal characters enact the drama of Jungian “individuation,” the unification of the transcendent self through the confrontation and assimilation of the archetypes into consciousness. The metanarrative, as evinced by the archetypes and individuation, is the novel’s triple theme of transcendence – of death (Gradus), of ego (Kinbote), and ultimately of art (Shade).
This paper presumes knowledge of the novel and the prior debates.
Employing quotes from the Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces" I trace the delusional Charles Kinbote, aka King Charles II of Zembla, through his travels and travails through the "mirror of exile" from his distant northern land to America. I maintain that this is Nabokov's intentional parody, not simply an interpretation