Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov (67 page)

59
not Kinbote but Botkin
: Nabokov would play many games in
Pale Fire
, several of which take place in the index of the novel, with its inclusion of things that have little or no presence in the rest of the book.
Botkin
, of course, is a scrambling
of Kinbote
, and one
Botkin, V
. shows up in the Index as a scholar of Russian descent. Botkin is mentioned in the body of the novel in absentia as a professor teaching in another department.

a phrase stressing the “Nova” again
: PF, 267.

60
Dolbier, “Nabokov’s Plums.”

61
Richard Rorty hypothesizes that after a reader becomes attentive to the suffering he previously failed to note in Nabokov’s novels, he is “suddenly revealed to himself as, if not hypocritical, at least cruelly incurious,” and recognizes “his
semblable
, his brother, in Humbert and Kinbote” (
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity
, 163). The interpretation of
Pale Fire
I am suggesting reconfigures that reading by adding another level to it. If we recognize Kinbote’s incuriosity in ourselves, we can apply a newfound attentiveness not only to events like the death of the poet Shade’s daughter (which Rorty specifically addresses), but also to Kinbote himself. Instead of settling for the stock character of a “monstrous parasite” (PF, 172), a lunatic, a homosexual, or a pedophile, persistent curiosity will be rewarded with a richer story.

62
“
unable to reproach himself
”: GIFT, 228;
ceases to resist even worse impulses
: Humbert mentions at one point that his mind fought his body in the matter of nymphets (not always successfully, apparently) through his twenties and into his early thirties (ANL, 18). Again, after
Lolita
escapes from him, he seeks help from a Catholic priest.

his fondness for faunlets
: Nabokov clarified in SO that this was what the “Dear Jesus” line in
Pale Fire
meant (290).

63
Robson,
Solovki
, 229. And even as a concentration camp, the Solovki monastery complex was well known for many of the elements Nabokov used to construct Kinbote’s escape—a castle prison, hidden tunnels, and a theater company.

64
all sorts of games
: The Crown Jewels entry leads to
Hiding Place; Hiding place
leads to
potaynik; Potaynik
links to
taynik; Taynik
has a definition of “Russ., secret place,” and then directs readers back to the
Crown Jewels
entry.
Potaynik
is merely an old form of
taynik
. See Brian Boyd’s
Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery
(1999), 124.

in the ruins, sir, of some old barracks
: SO, 92. Nabokov further mentioned that the ruins of the barracks were near Kobaltana. Kobaltana, which makes no appearance at all in the body of the book, is listed in the index as a mountain resort in a remote and desolate place that is still familiar to military families. It may have been a bid to clue readers in to the link between the imaginary Zembla and its real-world counterpart, Nova Zembla, which, like Kobaltana, had planned a resort, was remote and desolate, and did have a military presence, as well as barracks.

65
“Russian Academic Freedom,” NYT, September 1, 1922, 9.

66
SM, 262.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN
:
S
PEAK
, M
EMORY

1
SM, 264.

2
Schiff notes that Véra “was all for civil rights, but ‘hooligans’ should be put away—for good” (336). Unlike her husband, Véra favored the death penalty. See Alan Levy’s “Understanding Vladimir Nabokov.”

3
CBS News, “Oswald Midnight Press Conference,” recorded November 22/23, 1963.

4
Dmitri Nabokov later reported his father watching the newsreel and saying, “If they have worked over this poor little guy needlessly.…” (BBRY, 22).

5
Presumably
Invitation to a Beheading
. BBRY, 35.

6
AFLP, 278–9.

7
international apology to Ghana
: Smith, Hedrick, “U.S. Apologizes to Ghana,” NYT, September 11, 1963, 33; “
The Negro Revolt
”: “News Notes: Classroom and Campus,” NYT, April 19, 1964, E7.

8
BBAY, 50.

9
VNSL, 378.

10
who had managed to infiltrate and destroy
: Schiff, 336;
would have deserted little Anne Frank
: Buckley called the protesters “young slobs” and condemned their “mincing ranks” as well as their “epicene resentment.” Burks, Edward, “Buckley Assails Vietnam Protest,” NYT, October 22, 1965, 1.

11
Dabney,
Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature
, 453–4.

12
Meyers,
Edmund Wilson: A Biography
, 417.

13
U.S. involvement in Vietnam a disgrace
: Dabney, 486;
infuriated the president
. Another invitee to the Festival, poet Robert Lowell, had his refusal printed
in full on the front page of
The New York Times
, expressing his support for Johnson’s civil rights policies but offering only “dismay and distrust” over current U.S. foreign policy (See “Robert Lowell Rebuffs Johnson As Protest Over Foreign Policy,” NYT, June 3, 1965, 1).

“
close to traitors
”: Goldman, Eric,
The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson
(1974), 529.

14
Dabney,
Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature
, 404.

15
“
a great grievance
”: Dabney, 401. Wilson mentioned this to their mutual friend Roman Grynberg; “
You have quite forgotten me
”: NWL, 366.

16
BBAY, 496.

17
Schiff, 330; From a letter from Rowohlt to Véra Nabokov, BBAY, 480.

18
did not lodge in his
: NWL, 360;
most obscure words
: PF, 46; “
constantly quoting Housman
”: PF, 25. Wilson’s Housman essay was also in
The Triple Thinkers
. There are many more such points of common interest, such as Proust, whose place among American readers had been secured by Wilson’s landmark work on modernism,
Axel’s Castle
. In
Pale Fire
, Kinbote says that he had not originally believed that Proust’s masterpiece had any connection to its time and place, or to real people, but that he had since realized that he was wrong. For more on Nabokov/Wilson/Housman, see Rorty,
Contingency
, 149, n10.

19
shadow of Robert Frost
: PF, 48;
Nabokov’s admiration of Shade
: SO, 119. See also Socher’s “Shades of Frost: a Hidden Source for Nabokov’s
Pale Fire,” Times Literary Supplement
, July 1, 2005. Boyd further notes that Nabokov had also rented Frost’s house through a third party in Cambridge in 1952. BBAY, 222.

“
third-rate
”: Meyers,
Edmund Wilson
, 464; “
fraud
” and “
self-promoter
”: These latter two are from a Wilson letter to Lionel Trilling, referenced in Colm Tóibín’s “Edmund Wilson: American Critic,” NYT, September 4, 2005, F1.

20
Wilson, Edmund,
Night Thoughts
(1961), 233–45. Matthew Roth found Wilson’s poem “The Pickerel Pond: A Double Pastoral” paired with the letters between the two men, and linked it to the language in
Pale Fire
.

21
PF, 45 and 193.

22
“The White Heart” is a sentimental story about the excesses of the First World War and Revolutionary period, and the true heart of a Russian grandmother who passes on her piety and strength in the face of suffering to those she meets. It was written by Alexey Remizov, whom James Joyce had admired but whom Nabokov disliked intensely. A translation had appeared in 1921 in
The Dial
, a publication for which Edmund Wilson had written his landmark essay on T. S. Eliot. Though it’s hard to believe Nabokov would have admired any of the story’s literary technique, it demonstrates the existence of a widely recognized symbolism of the “white heart” of Nabokov’s poem, not unlike the later reference in the poem to “edelweiss” (which translates as “noble white”).

23
Nabokov, Vladimir, “On Translating Pushkin Pounding the Clavichord,” NYRB, April 30, 1964.

24
Wilson writes that “his speaking of the eclogues of ‘the overrated Virgil’ as ‘stale imitations of the idyls of Theocritus’ would seem to demonstrate that he cannot have had any very close acquaintance with this poet in the original”; and later “which the author, in a letter, once described to me.…” From “Let ters: The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov,” NYRB, July 15, 1965.

25
Dabney,
Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature
, 406.

26
Nabokov, Vladimir, “Letters: The Strange Case of Nabokov and Wilson,” NYRB Letters, August 26, 1965.

27
Both Nabokov’s and Wilson’s responses are from the August 26, 1965 issue of NYRB.

28
Amour propre
: self-love, one’s self-esteem. SO, 264.

29
BBAY, 496.

30
Meyers,
Edmund Wilson: A Biography
, 259–60. Wilson wrote this description of Nabokov in a November 1940 letter to his mentor at Princeton, Christian Gauss.

31
VNSL, 424.

32
Barabtarlo, Gennady. “Nabokov in the Wilson Archive,”
Cycnos
, Volume 10 n°1, posted online June 13, 2008.

33
Nabokov, Vladimir,
Encounter
, Letters to the editor, May 1966, 91.

34
Nabokov,
Encounter
, May 1966, 458.

35
Ibid., 477.

36
Ibid., 511.

37
Ibid., 486.

38
Ibid.

39
Solzhenitsyn,
The Oak and the Calf
, 83–4.

40
a personal meeting
: Taubman, William,
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
(2004), 527;
regretted championing
: Solzhenitsyn,
The Oak and the Calf
, 86.

41
Scammell, Michael, “Circles of Hell,” NYRB, April 28, 2011.

42
Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago
, vol. 2 (1997), 62.

43
An excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s
1918–1956
Volume 2
68; English translation of the passage has been adapted from page 343 of Vladimir Abarinov’s
The Murderers of Katyn
(1993).