NABOKV-L discussion: Click "Add new forum topic" to get a new conversation going.

PALE FIRE is a pastiche of parody, drawing from many sources. My particular focus has been Jungian archetypes and alchemy. Of course it is well known that the satirical poets of the 18th Century, Pope, Swift and Johnson comprise a major constituents in Nabokov’s “bursting spongebag” novel. They each made fun of the alchemy of the day. I admit to not knowing much about these men, so I’m doing some catch-up and discovering some interesting things that support my theories.

What else can we know of Sasha Chorny, who according to D.S.

Gerard De Vries, I want to thank you for your recent posts about Sybil and Huguenot Protestantism. It has helped me find another link to forge in my Jungian/alchemic theories of Pale Fire.

Puritans in Pale Fire

by Gerard de Vries

The Mad Hatter’s Hats

Unpacking the Nested Hat Boxes

                  inside

Vladimir Nabokov’s Semi-Autobiographies

                  Part I

In the light of discussions (and the surge in activity) presented by both Gerard de Vries’ essay and Mary Ross’s comments, I wish to offer here, my two Indian cents.

by Gerard de Vries

Has Nabokov commented explicitly on Alexander Herzen elsewhere apart from Speak, Memory? The nod to Herzen's From the Other Shore has been noted long ago as is this passage (as a caption to their Petersburg address):

"Aleksandr Ivanovich Hertzen (1812–1870) was a famous liberal (whom this commemoration by a police state would hardly have gratified) as well as the talented author of Bïloe i Dumï (translatable as “Bygones and Meditations”), one of my father’s favorite books."
Searching in the forum this thread comes up:

An Arrant Thief,

A poem of couplets in 123 lines, divided into Four Cantos.

[See Attached, 5 pages]

A collegial, companion piece that is congenial to the creative and pays homage to Vladimir Nabokov’s poem, Pale Fire.

There are a few bits of Pale Fire which I haven’t seen mentioned in the forums, and I’m never sure whether this is because they’re so obvious as to not need comment, or because they’ve not been broadly understood (or maybe we completely disagree). At the risk of stating the obvious, here are a few brief notes.

The confounding of space and time is a recurring theme in Nabokov’s work, starting at least as early as Mary, where consecutive rooms are identified with consecutive dates: