Day 4 Presentation Comments and Final Remarks

I liked Shelby’s use of the mandala as an image for working with Pale Fire, as the idea of concentrically nested shapes fits well with the multiple levels of interpretation of the text. It seems that with Pale Fire, each time a new level of understanding is uncovered, many additional pathways open up which in turn lead to deeper levels of comprehension. This is similar to the concept of the mandala in which an individual may enter inside the realm of one shape, but there will still be innumerably more shapes that have yet to be penetrated. In Pale Fire, there is no center of the mandala, as the concentric shapes and levels of understanding continue on into infinity. Perhaps this is why Nabokov preferred the image of the spiral to that of the circle, as a circle is limited – eventually one will end up where he or she started. A spiral, on the other hand, is endless, and even though one’s path may pass near a previously visited locale, no one place is ever visited twice. It seems that the mandala, then, can be interpreted as another representation of the spiral, a fractal pattern in which one shape, one pathway, ultimately leads to a multitude of others. This is part of the beauty with Pale Fire, as no matter how closely the text is read, there will always be more discoveries to make.

As a final note, I just like to again thank Dr. Sexson and all of my classmates for making this seminar such a challenging and rewarding experience. This class has shown me that “reading in” to a text is really all we can do, and that making connections to other works and our own life experiences is ultimately what makes the reading of difficult works so enjoyable. I believe that this class has given me a greater ability to think critically about things that at first may seem to be beside the point. It is, after all, the details that have the greatest ability to influence us and to the shape our way of thinking. Thanks again everyone for a great semester!

Day 3 Presentation Comments

I thought that Morgan’s alphabet book was quite an ingenious and fitting idea for a project on Pale Fire. It’s obvious that Nabokov sees significance in words and letters, judging by all of the alphabetized names and wordplay in Pale Fire. It also seems like many of the letters are in fact the first names of characters in the novel, almost as if Nabokov wanted to cover as many of the letters as possible. I wouldn’t put such intentions past a literary genius. If I remember right, the class was having trouble coming up with “I” words for you alphabet book. I’ve got one suggestion, although it is not a name specific to Pale Fire: you could use “infinite,” as the levels of reading the novel seem to be unlimited, and, as Dustin discussed, the human experience is one of multiple infinities. The word infinite is used in consecutive lines in the poem (122 and 123) as well. Also, you could use “immortality,” as immortality (especially in its relation to Hazel) is another important theme in the novel.

The connections that Isabel discovered between the Alder tree and Pale Fire were quite interesting as well. Isabel mentioned that green and red dye can be made out of the Alder tree, which is significant because green and red have substantial symbolic meaning in the novel. As Mary McCarthy points out in her essay, the traditional connotative associations of red and green are reversed in Pale Fire. In the novel, red is the color of salvation and green is the color of evil and pursuit, as Kinbote is saved by all of his supporters wearing red hats that are identical to his while two of Kinbote’s enemy’s, the extremist leader Uzumondov and the professor Emerald, are always described wearing green. It’s probably not a coincidence then that Nabokov includes Alder trees in the novel when they supply dyes of the complementary colors of red and green. This juxtaposition of opposites seems to occur often in Pale Fire, and the red vs. green idea can be connected to the Kinbote vs. Shade contrast – a topic large enough for its own entire paper.

Maria’s discovery as to the origin of Kinbote’s persona is fascinating. It was interesting to learn that several of Kinbote’s characteristics are identical to those of the four Scandinavian kings during the time that Nabokov wrote Pale Fire. Nabokov must have certainly been familiar with the Scandinavian kings at the time, and these connections with Kinbote’s description cannot be a coincidence. It’s a little surprising to learn that Nabokov would draw inspiration from actual people, though, as he claimed in one of his written interviews that none of his characters were “based” off of anyone in particular in real life. This specific instance, however, seems to be a little different. It is not so much that Nabokov created Kinbote specifically as a result of being inspired by the kings, but rather the character Kinbote was already conceived and Nabokov added in some of the traits of the current kings to reward the astute reader. This is yet another example of Nabokov hiding tiny gems in the text for the pleasure of his followers.

I thought Dustin’s discussion on the “formalism” method of criticism was especially appropriate for Pale Fire. Kinbote definitely follows this formalist model, as he gives the form of Zembla to Shade’s poem even though Shade had no intentions of involving the distant northern land in his poem. Kinbote’s criticism is valid nonetheless, as the poem itself is more important than Shade’s thoughts on it, even though Shade is the creator. It is what each individual reader in the audience sees in the poem that is important, and Kinbote happens to see references to his homeland all throughout the poem. Even though it is possible to take this type of commentary a little too far, I think Dustin’s formalist method is legitimate, as it is the audience that a work is ultimately trying to involve. The audience may or may not have the same interpretation as the author or poet, but what ultimately matters is that readers formulate their own connections to the text and draw from it a unique interpretation.

Day 2 presentation comments

I thought Nels did a great job in his presentation of applying science to the texts that we have read throughout the class. His interpretation of the complicated chemical reactions that synthesize organic molecules is not unlike that of an artist who creates meaning out of the seemingly random characteristics of nature. In both cases, the scientist/artist takes something that is originally meaningless and produces a work of beauty. And without both the artist and the scientist, we as humans would be lost in the chaos of our surroundings.

Ashley’s presentation was exemplary in all regards, and one aspect that I found quite interesting was the alternate interpretation of Hazel’s message in the barn. As we had previously discussed in class, the jumbled message repeats the word “atalanta” several times, which serves to solidify Hazel’s status as a Vanessa atalanta butterfly after her death. Ashley found another way to read the message that consists of Hazel warning her father not to go to the house of the crazy commentator (Kinbote), as this is the event that leads to Shade’s murder. Indeed, if read aloud the message does sound vaguely like a warning to a father, with words like “pada” (padre or papa), “ata” (ought), “not,” and “ogo” (go). Like almost everything else in Pale Fire, it appears that Hazel’s cryptic message is subject to multiple interpretations.

Bizz and Jenny’s portrait of Shade and Kinbote was outstanding! It was packed with symbolic significance to Pale Fire, and the more I looked at it the more details I caught that were direct references to the text. I liked especially how the center of the painting was a mirror of sorts that reflected Shade and Kinbote. This is not a normal mirror, however, as what is on one side is partially distorted on the other side. For example, Kinbote and Shade have some characteristics in common (such as that they are both interested in literature), but are exact opposites in many other ways (such as that Kinbote is erect and handsome while Shade is hunched over and ugly). Similarly, I thought it fitting that Bizz and Jenny’s painting portrayed a sun on one side and a moon on the other, as the sun and moon are often seen as opposites even though their light is derived from the same source (the sun). This image further establishes the mirror’s status as an agent of both reflection and distortion.

Bizz’s diagram of dyslexia was quite relevant, as I can see similarities between the thought process of a dyslexic and the manner in which we read Pale Fire. In both instances, confusing material is presented to the reader, which ultimately leads to rickety conclusions. It appears that the conclusion reached by the reader the first time can send him or her either way in comprehending the text. If the initial conclusion is close to the “right” one, the reader will get progressively closer with each repetition of the cycle, but if the first conclusion is totally off-base, each new cycle will lead the reader on an ever widening spiral away from the correct interpretation. Thus, whether we like to admit it or not, our reading process of a difficult text is similar to that of a dyslexic in that our initial impressions play an important role in understanding the material.

Jenny’s presentation on the different variations of chess was interesting, and I was excited to learn that there is a type of chess called ultima chess. My paper topic is on Zembla’s role as an ultima thule, so I will have to look up some further information on this variety of chess. Jenny mentioned that in ultima chess, the positions of the white king and queen are reversed. This could in some way be related to Kinbote, the exiled Zemblan king, as he seems to have traits more fitting for a queen than a king (the most obvious being his homosexuality). If this is so, the fact that the white, and not the black, king and queen are reversed is appropriate, as I envision Kinbote as white (clean appearance, religiously pure) and Shade as black (not religious, shades and shadows are dark).

Comments on in-class presentations

In her presentation on Tuesday, Madeleine brought up an interesting point regarding Nabokov’s ideal writer. Nabokov thought that writers should first and foremost be enchanters, followed by teachers and storytellers. This view on the responsibilities of writers is fascinating, as it seems to run counter to the popular argument that all writing should teach a lesson in some form or another. But this point is certainly applicable to Pale Fire, as while readers most certainly learn and make discoveries throughout the text, they are more than anything enchanted by Nabokov’s writing.

Michael’s presentation was very well done, and the complex image of a magnetic chess board on a windowpane was both ingenious and relevant. His theory that readers of Pale Fire are like Kinbote, escaped kings whose moves depend on the opposing action of a higher figure, was something that I had not thought about before. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense – the reader’s relationship to Nabokov is very similar to Kinbote’s relationship to Shade. As readers we are controlled by Nabokov’s moves, but at the same time we, like Kinbote, are left alone to interpret in different manners the text of a great writer.

Breanna’s discussion of spirals as a representation of eternity was fascinating, and it was interesting to learn that Nabokov preferred the image of the spiral to that of the circle. This discussion reminded me of the ancient Anasazi culture of the American southwest, who left numerous images of spirals as pictographs or petroglyphs on rock outcroppings and canyon walls. I have seen petroglyphs of spirals, and I have always been curious as to their meaning. After listening to Breanna’s presentation, I am beginning to think that these messages left by the Anasazi have something to do with the endless twist of time.


As I mentioned in class, the performance of one of Bach’s fugues in Sarah’s presentation made me think of another connection to eternity – this one in relation to music. The counterpoint technique in the fugue utilizes inversion and repetition, which can be interpreted to resemble singing in around. The classic example of singing in around is “Row, row, row your boat,” which will go on without end because each time one group finishes the song, a different group has already started again. In this way, Sarah did a great job of connecting music to the idea of the eternal.

Paper outline and thesis

I plan to write my paper on the subject of Nabokov’s Zembla with regard to how it can be interpreted as an ultima thule. My thesis will be something to the effect of: “Zembla is an ultima thule because it is a northern land beyond the boundaries of the real world as well as a manifestation of V. Botkin’s unattainable goal.” This thesis will naturally yield a paper that is composed of two parts – one part discussing the more literal interpretation the ultima thule and the other part addressing the metaphorical significance of the ultima thule.

In the first section I will deal with some background information regarding the historical use of the term ultima thule in order to establish its connection to the concept of unknown northern lands. From here, I will be able to move on to a discussion of how the specifically northern aspect of the ultima thule relates to Zembla. I will also attempt to bring in some of the other texts from our class in this section, as several connect with the motif of the distant, mysterious north. For example, A.S. Byatt mentions in The Biographer’s Tale how Linnaeus would sometimes report having other-worldly experiences on his long journeys in the Lapland (a region in northern Scandanavia). Additionally, the characters Hilda in The Master Builder and Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy of the People both make their appearances in the plot after returning from a sort of exile in the north. References to these other literary works will hopefully augment my investigation into the importance of Zembla’s northern location.

I will begin the second section of the paper by discussing the Roman poet Virgil, who first used the ultima thule to symbolize an unattainable goal. I plan to connect this metaphorical significance to V. Botkin, the “American scholar of Russian descent” who entertains the impossible aspiration of making his life exciting and relevant. The means by which Botkin pursues this goal is to fabricate for himself an imaginary northern nation, Zembla, of which he (as Charles Kinbote) is the exiled king. I might also address the idea of exile as it relates to Zembla and the ultima thule, as the experience of exile can often lead to the generation of the perpetual, unfulfilled longing to return to one’s homeland. The fictional Kinbote seems to have such nostalgic, fantastically impossible feelings for his native land, and thus the concept of unattainable goals can be connected to Zembla on another level.

To tie everything together at the end of the paper, I will mention the index definition of Zembla (“a distant northern land”). Zembla’s description in the index is relevant because it relates to my two main points proving that Zembla is an ultima thule – the “northern land” is an obvious connection to the ultima thule’s unknown northern location, while “distant” can be applied to the concept of an unreachable goal.

Shades of Grey

In her blog for Tuesday’s class, Shelby described how she woke up with the opening lines of Pale Fire (the poem) stuck in her head. I couldn’t help but connect her experience to a night a few weekends ago when I had a similar encounter with Nabokov’s Pale Fire. It was a very cold night spent in a sleeping bag high in the Pioneer Mountains, and each time I awoke the same three word phase would course through my mind: “shades of grey.” I had done a lot of thinking the previous day about the significance of the characters’ names in Pale Fire, so no doubt this expression that came to me in my frozen daze was a reference to John Shade and his killer Jack Degree (alias de Grey). It seemed novel to me at the time that the names of two of the principle characters in the text could be combined to produce a phrase that is commonly used to represent the middle region between two extremes, or the gradations (Gradus ~ gradations) between two opposites. Of course, Nabokov’s work is full of such word play – an example that immediately comes to mind is the reversals of the syllables in Kinbote to produce Botkin – but this concept of shades of grey appears to permeate Pale Fire in several ways.

First, the various shades of grey can be seen as an analog for how Pale Fire is read and understood, as there are several levels on which to examine the book. Initially, the reader will be inclined to take everything for face value and will see little meaning or richness to the text. This can be symbolized by the darker shades of grey, or toward the black end of the spectrum. But as the reader digs deeper into the subtleties and connections that slowly become apparent, a new world will open up in which a vast expanse of networks and texture is visible. The lighter shades of grey represent this deeper reading of the book in which transparency replaces the murky obscurity of the darker shades. Thus, as readers make discoveries they are, in a process that invokes Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, led out of the darkness and into a lighted realm full of connections and allusions via ascension to higher levels on the ladder of shades, the ladder of grey.

Grey is a color often associated with age and death, and in this sense Pale Fire is packed with smudges of varying shades of grey. The death of Hazel Shade is an event that greatly impacts John Shade, and there are a multitude of references to Hazel throughout the poem. There seem to be shades of Hazel at every turn in the book, and her presence is portrayed as one of quiet omniscience – tirelessly warning her father of his impending fate. Consequently, her more subtle, obscure role in Pale Fire means that her portrayal as a brighter color would be inappropriate; in other words she does indeed exist in shades of grey. Additionally, there are shades of other grey figures in the book that are not strictly characters in Pale Fire. For example, the shadow of Shakespeare falls upon the text in numerous occurrences, the most obvious being that the title of the poem was taken from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Also, as Madeleine discussed in class Tuesday, various shades of The Tempest appear throughout the text in great abundance. Shakespeare, a giant in the world of literature and the embodiment of the Elizabethan era, thus serves as a silhouette from the past, a unique shade of grey time that reminds readers of Pale Fire’s fundamental connection and relevance to literature itself.

As stated earlier, shades of grey can also be understood to represent the middle region between two opposites, the gradations between black and white. In Pale Fire, Kinbote and John Shade are the black and white characters – polar opposites that become entwined through one’s obsession and another’s pity. Kinbote is the exile from imaginary Zembla, tall and well groomed but slightly paranoid, while Shade is the homegrown poet from New Wye, homely and unimpressive in appearance but generous and sympathetic in spirit. What, then, are the shades of grey between Kinbote’s black and Shade’s white? Are there other characters in Pale Fire that represent this middle ground between the two opposites? Perhaps Nabokov himself is one of these shades of grey, part delusional Kinbote and part down-to-Earth Shade. This, however, seems unlikely because from what I know of Nabokov, he was much more Shade than Kinbote (there are even parallels between Nabokov’s wife Vera and Shade’s wife Sybil to support this interpretation). At the same time, there is still some of Kinbote in Nabokov, seeing how Nabokov himself experienced exile twice in his life (first with the Bolshevik Revolution and second with Nazi Germany). I suppose that if Nabokov is a shade of grey, he is closer to Shade’s end of the spectrum – a darker shade of white rather than true grey. As far as there being other characters in Pale Fire who represent the middle region of grey, it appears uncertain. Perhaps Sybil can be considered to be a shade of grey seeing how she seems to have two personalities, loathing Kinbote for most of the commentary yet endorsing his publishing of the manuscript towards the end of the book. Of course, this is merely speculation and the subject deserves further consideration. What is clear, however, is that Pale Fire is not purely black and white; rather it exists in the more subtle shades of grey. And it is these shades that make reading Nabokov’s work such a rich, rewarding, and enlightening experience.

Not text, but texture

Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.

These lines (808-815) of the poem Pale Fire appear to be a joyous epiphany that struck John Shade after he realized that his white fountain image did not correspond to the woman’s vision when she had a heart attack. At first, Shade is disappointed that the white fountain was actually a white mountain, and that the word “fountain” was a misprint in the article. But he soon realizes that it is exactly this coincidence – the twist of fate that he should read an article with a misprint about a fountain that corresponds so closely to his own experience during a seizure – that demonstrates the web of connection in the world. In Shade’s words, such unlikely convergences, even though the convergence was not of the nature for which he was originally hoping, prove that there exists a “web of sense.” He seems to take great satisfaction from this revelation, seeing “something of the same pleasure in it as they who played it found.” In this way, Shade has come to appreciate the architecture of the universe in the same manner that a painter would value the hidden subtleties and connections present in his painting. These last lines of the stanza are intriguing on another level, as they appear to be suggesting that there is some greater power that can design the “web” of the universe and that can play with different elements to reach a desired structure. Judging from the rest of the poem and the commentary, Shade is not a religious person, although he most definitely contemplates such religion-related quandaries as life after death. Perhaps this is another instance of Shade addressing the issue of religion, in which he acknowledges that there is some sort of “player” that controls the “correlated pattern in the game.”

Finally, it is the first line of this stanza (808) that appears to have the most relevance to the concept of Shade understanding the essence of things. He realizes that his attempt to directly make sense of the world (the failed white fountain escapade) did not turn up any concrete, straightforward answers as a book or encyclopedia might provide. But through the coincidence of the fountain-mountain misprint, Shade was made privy to a more nebulous feeling of the universe – in other words he detected its texture. It is as if direct confrontation with the world to determine its essence will leave one empty-handed, as there is no individual text that provides a summary. On the other hand, those who heed the signs of apparently trivial coincidences and events – matters that seem to be beside the point – will be rewarded with an understanding of texture and the rough web of connection. Thus, Shade takes a misprint that at first seems only to deter his understanding of the nature of things, and uses it to discern “not text, but texture” in his surroundings.

Mary McCarthy and Zembla

The following blog does not necessarily have to do with my specific paper topic, but it nonetheless provides a few interesting discoveries (by way of Mary McCarthy) on Zembla.

“‘That crystal land,’ notes the commentator, loony Professor Botkin. ‘Perhaps an allusion to Zembla, my dear country.’ On the plane of everyday sanity, he errs. But on the plane of poetry and magic, he is speaking the simple truth, for Zembla is Semblance, Appearance, the mirror-realm, the Looking Glass of Alice. This is the first clue in the treasure-hunt, pointing the reader to the dual or punning nature of the whole work's composition. Pale Fire, a reflective poem, is also a prism of reflections. Zembla, the land of seeming, now governed by the Extremists, is the antipodes of Appalachia, in real homespun democratic America, but it is also the semblable, the twin, as seen in a distorting glass. Semblance becomes resemblance.”
-Mary McCarthy, A Bolt From The Blue

In Mary McCarthy’s interpretation of Pale Fire, Zembla is a land of both semblance and resemblance. According to the Google Dictionary, semblance refers to “the outward appearance or apparent form of something, esp. when the reality is different,” while resemblance is “a way in which two or more things are alike.” Thus, Zembla is both a deception and distortion of the real world as well as an uncannily accurate reflection of actuality. How did McCarthy arrive at these conclusions? The first, and perhaps most obvious, method in which to connect Zembla with semblance and resemblance is the simple world association, as semblance and resemblance seem to contain the word “Zembla” within their pronunciations. As we have learned with Nabokov, such word play is both intentional and relevant, and the sound of his fictitious people and places is fundamentally connected with the person or place’s significance. Furthermore, there are parallels between Zembla and Nabokov’s representation of the real world, New Wye, which can be considered resemblances. For example, Uzumondov, the head of the extremist Shadows group in Zembla, and Professor Emerald at Wordsmith College are both characters that Kinbote despises, and both are portrayed as wearing green jackets. In this case, these two characters of Zembla (the imaginary) and New Wye (the real) resemble each other because they share similar qualities. But Zembla is also a semblance, or false façade, of the real world. As McCarthy points out in her essay, the traditional connotations of the colors green and red are flipped in Zembla. Red, usually associated with death or destructive emotions, is the color that saves the life of King Charles during the revolution, as forty of his supporters donned red hats and sweaters to look like (resemble) the fleeing king and thus confuse the extremists. On the other hand, the color green, which usually signifies youth and the life-giving qualities of nature, is portrayed as the color of anxiety and pursuit with regard to Uzumondov’s green jacket. In this manner, an aspect of Zembla is similar to the real world, but in an inverted fashion: in other words there is semblance between Zembla and reality.

Zembla and the Ultima Thule: Paper outline

For my paper, I plan to explore the concept of Zembla as an ultima thule, a northern land that is beyond the boundaries of the known world. As a starting point, I will establish the interpretation that Zembla is an invention of Kinbote’s imagination and that it thus can be considered an imaginary land, an ultima thule. The Roman poet Virgil first used the term ultima thule to symbolize an unattainable goal, and I will attempt to identify Kinbote’s impossible aspiration. This discussion will also most likely include reference to Halvard Solness’s “castles in the air” in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, as the image of castles floating in the sky, like Zembla, symbolizes an impossible ambition.

Additionally, I plan to discuss the parallels between New Wye and Zembla, as if Zembla is an imaginary ultima thule, New Wye must in some way represent the real world. Some of the parallels may include the two universities, namely Wordsmith College in New Wye and the university a disguised Kinbote taught at in Zembla (page 76). There are parallels between the characters in Zembla and New Wye as well, such as the imaginary killer Jakob Gradus and the real killer Jack Grey and between Kinbote’s wife Disa and Sybil Shade (page 207). I might also discuss some of the more subtle and debatable similarities between characters in Zembla and New Wye, such as how Kinbote and Hazel Shade are both potentially mentally unstable (page 193).

As another topic for consideration, I will explore the importance of the name “Zembla” to the concept of the ultima thule, specifically with regard to how the name seems to be taken out of the word “resemblance.” It is intended that this connection will strengthen my argument about the parallels and resemblances between Zembla and New Wye. I will also conduct some research to see from where exactly Nabokov got the name “Zembla.” If it turns out that Zembla is referenced in other literary works, the connections will be important to understanding the significance of Kinbote’s “distant northern land.”

The final idea that I plan to discuss in my paper concerns the significance of the northern aspect to Zembla and the ultima thule, as both are not only imaginary places, but imaginary places in the north. Why must these fictitious places be in the north? I will try to find out whether there is some meaning or significance in mythology to the direction north that would make it appropriate to hold an imaginary land. This discussion will include references to The Biographer’s Tale, as A.S. Byatt mentions how Linnaeus would sometimes report having other-worldly experiences on his long journeys in the Lapland (an area in northern Scandinavia). Finally, I will bring in Henrik Ibsen’s plays, as the characters Hilda in The Master Builder and Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy of the People both make their appearances in the plot after returning from a sort of exile in the north. Ibsen seems to draw a lot of imagery from the northern latitudes, and perhaps this has some relevance to my discussion of the importance of Zembla’s northern location.

Nabokov and Vonnegut

While reading Pale Fire, there were several instances in which I could not help but drawing parallels between Nabokov’s novel and some of the works of Kurt Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse Five. For example, in the poem Pale Fire a “gauzy mockingbird” is described as making the sound “to-wee, to-wee,” (line 66). Additionally, a few lines later is the couplet “Upward hop-flop, and instantly (to-wee!)/ Returning to her perch—the new TV,” (lines 69-80). The bird song that the poem evokes reminded me of the last sentence in Slaughterhouse Five, in which a little bird sings “Poo-tee-weet.” Vonnegut uses the bird song to illustrate how it is impossible to intelligently respond to the atrocities of a massacre such as the Dresden firebombing, and how all there is to say after witnessing such an event is “Poo-tee-weet.” The off-handed, isolated nature of “to-wee!” in line 70 of Pale Fire is similar to the way that Vonnegut uses “Poo-tee-weet” as its own standalone sentence at the end of Slaughterhouse Five, and may likewise be attempting to portray John Shade’s difficult and spontaneous emotional response to the suicide of his daughter.

The other occurrence in which I was reminded of Slaughterhouse Five was in Kinbote’s commentary to the poem’s line 627. In reference to “The great Starover Blue,” the note reads “This Sinyavin migrated from Saratov to Seattle and begot a son who eventually changed his name to Blue and married Stella lazurchik, an Americanized Kashube. So it goes. Honest Starover Blue will probably be surprised by the epithet bestowed upon him by a jesting Shade,” (page 236). The use of the phrase “So it goes” invokes Vonnegut’s employment of an identical line after the mention of any character dying in Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut used “So it goes” to portray the stark inevitability of death as well as the Tralfamadorian idea that one is dead in some moments but alive in others. Nabokov’s use of this simple, three word phrase would seem to be a direct allusion to Slaughterhouse Five, but some quick research will show that Pale Fire (1962) was written seven years before Slaughterhouse Five (1969). Thus, Nabokov could not have drawn from Vonnegut’s novel for the two instanced discussed above, as Slaughterhouse Five was not yet written. It is possible that Vonnegut’s initial inspiration to use the phrase “So it goes” came from Pale Fire, as he likely would have read some of Nabokov’s work after Nabokov became famous by writing the novel Lolita. Of course, these connections between Pale Fire and Slaughterhouse Five could be nothing but coincidences, but as we discussed in class, pure coincidences are rare in Nabokov’s writing.

Aside from the aforementioned “reminders” of Slaughterhouse Five in Pale Fire, there are some broader connections between the two works. Both plots center around a mentally unstable character (Charles Kinbote in Pale Fire and Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five) who finds comfort in an imaginary place (Zembla in Pale Fire and Tralfamadore in Slaughterhouse Five). Both main characters appear to retreat into their imaginary worlds at times of conflict, and other characters tend not to believe the stories that Kinbote and Pilgrim tell from Zembla and Tralfamadore. Though their friends and family see these characters as crazy for their tales of fantastical lands, Kinbote and Pilgrim are heavily dependent on their respective ultima thules for defining who they are. Additionally, Pale Fire and Slaughterhouse Five both deal with themes of immortality. In Pale Fire John Shade sees butterflies as proof that Hazel’s spirit is alive, and in Slaughterhouse Five the Tralfamadorians believe that death is but one moment in the continuum of life and that death can occupy one moment and life the next. Indeed, it is almost uncanny how well the plots and themes of these two stalwarts of 20th century literature correspond, and I am sure there are other connections that I am missing. All the more reason to keep digging deeper and to keep making discoveries!

Five discoveries and some further discussion

Five Discoveries:
1. The commentator Charles Kinbote is the same person as the Zemblan King Charles the Beloved. This discovery becomes apparent to readers fairly early in the commentary, as it is no coincidence that the king and the commentator are both named Charles, that Kinbote knows all of the finest details of the king’s escape, and that Kinbote has a distinct love for Zembla, his “dear country” (page 74). Though this is not a particularly difficult discovery to make, it is important to the reader’s understanding of the commentator’s unique situation and potential biases.
2. Zembla is an imaginary location. This observation should also arise fairly early in the commentary, as Kinbote portrays Zembla as a fantastical land where all bearded Zemblans closely resemble each other, where citizens have taken up the hobby of parachuting, and where a king was able to escape a revolution by crawling through a secret underground passage. Though maybe initially only a conjecture, Zembla’s status as imaginary is solidified if the reader examines the index, which refers to Zembla as “a distant northern land.” This broad and murky definition seems to indicate that Zembla is not a tangible place, as if it was there would probably be a more specific geographical reference. This discovery that Zembla is not a real country encourages readers to further question the legitimacy of Kinbote’s statements, as it appears that Kinbote has an affinity for inventing his own story.
3. John Shade does not necessarily view Kinbote as a friend, but does at least pity Kinbote. Kinbote believes that he and Shade are the best of friends, but Shade seems to have sympathy for Kinbote more than enjoy Kinbote’s company. This is illustrated when Shade is overheard stating in a conversation “That is the wrong word [readers do not know the exact word]. One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention. That’s merely turning a new leaf with the left hand,” (page 238). Kinbote believes that Shade is referring to someone else in town who is crazy, but it’s fairly obvious to readers that he is talking about Kinbote. This would lead to the conclusion that Shade is aware of Kinbote’s unstable mental state, but that he understands Kinbote’s need to create his own fantasyland of Zembla. It is thus that John Shade has sympathy for Kinbote, even though he may not view Kinbote as his best friend.
4. Jakob Gradus is imaginary. For one, Gradus’s many aliases (page 77, see page 77 at once) suggest that he lacks a concrete identity, and hence that he is fictional. Additionally, when describing Gradus’s character Kinbote adds the parenthetical anecdote to one of his statements of “this argument necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the status of man,” (page 279). At first, this little aside appears to be yet another of Kinbote’s insults toward Gradus, but if the reader considers the deeper implications of the statement, Kinbote may be implying that Gradus is not human and thus not real. Kinbote discusses the “human incompleteness” of Gradus later in this same passage, which again suggests that Gradus is not real, but imaginary. This discovery necessarily changes the reader’s interpretation of Shade’s murder, as if Gradus is not real, John Shade’s killer must have been someone else (see discussion below).
* 5. Kinbote fabricated some of the “variants” to Shade’s poem. In the index under the variants entry, some of the citations are parenthetically followed by “K’s contribution, x lines.” This seems to suggest that Kinbote himself added these variations and unpublished lines to Shade’s poem, not Shade himself as readers are initially led to believe. One of the variations that was Kinbote’s “contribution” is the eight-line section that’s discussed on page 99. This variant mentions the Zemblan king’s escape story by referencing a “northern king” who was able to successfully flee the country only because “some forty of his followers that night impersonated him.” It makes sense that this variant is entirely Kinbote’s fabrication, as Shade rarely referenced anything to do with Zembla in the actual poem. Thus, such inventions compromise Kinbote’s credibility as a commentator, and all of the elements of his commentary must now be considered with careful skepticism.


As to the matter of Charles the Beloved’s “crown jewels,” there are several hints in the commentary and index. The crown jewels are comprised of a gemmed scepter, a ruby necklace, and a diamond-studded crown (page 276). We first learn that two Russians, later given the names Niagarin and Andronnikov, are systematically digging through the king’s castle looking for the buried treasure. Knowledge of these actions by the Russians does not worry the king, which indicates that the crown jewels are not hidden in the castle. On page 212, Kinbote divulges to his ex-queen Disa that the jewels are in “their usual hiding place.” The jewels therefore must be located at a secure site, as the king is confident enough to keep the treasure in the same location for a long period of time. Furthermore, Kinbote affirms that the Russians are not looking in the correct place for the jewels when he remarks on pages 243-244 that a helper named Bland assisted the king in hiding the treasure in a “quite unexpected corner of Zembla.” Thus, we now know that the crown jewels are not hidden in the palace but are concealed in a remote location in Zembla. Finally, in the index Kinbote brings readers on a journey from Crown Jewels to Hiding Place to potaynik to taynik all with the use of “see…” or the cross referencing symbol of (q.v.). As occurs frequently in the index, Kinbote sends readers back to the beginning of the cycle by including “see Crown Jewels” in the entry for Taynik. From this referencing, the reader can conclude that the crown jewels are hidden in a place with the name of Taynik, which is attached to the abbreviated “Russ.” and is defined as a “secret place” in its entry in the index. Presumably, Russ. stands for Russia, which seems to contradict Kinbote’s earlier statement that the treasure was located somewhere in Zembla. This apparent inconsistency naturally leaves the reader questioning the geographical relationship between Zembla and Russia, and whether there is any relation between the two terms.

Throughout the commentary, the reader is led to believe that Jakob Gradus, the assassin belonging to the Anti-Karlist Shadow group, killed John Shade. But the more Kinbote refers to him, the less realistic Gradus appears. For example, the fact that Gradus goes by multiple aliases (Jack Degree, Jacques de Grey, Jack d’Argus, etc) gives his character a fictional quality, as if his lack of a consistent name equates to a lack of a concrete identity. Consequently, if Gradus is interpreted to be fictional or imaginary, there would be only one other logical suspect (besides Shade himself) for the murder mystery (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that we believe Kinbote’s version of the murder story). This one suspect is Kinbote, who would have the logical motive of wanting to acquire the poem. The interpretation that Kinbote murdered Shade is supported at the end of the commentary (page 300), where Kinbote admits that “My work is finished. My poet is dead.” In these consecutive sentences of parallel structure, Kinbote seems to be connecting his work with the death of Shade, which would suggest that Kinbote, not the invented Gradus, murdered John Shade.

Zembla as an ultima thule

According to Wikipedia, the term ultima thule is Latin for “farthest north,” and in medieval times was used to refer to any place that was beyond the “borders of the known world.” The first appearance of ultima thule in ancient literature is in the poems of Virgil (the Roman poet who wrote the Aeneid), who used the expression to symbolize a far off land and an unattainable goal. This concept of a mythic land fits nicely with Charles Kinbote’s “Zembla,” which in the index of Pale Fire is defined as “a distant northern land.” Whenever Kinbote brings up the topic of Zembla, he portrays it in a fantastic, almost heavenly manner, and even though he was exiled from Zembla he still holds the place in high regard. In a way, Kinbote’s descriptions make Zembla seem unrealistic. For example, in addition to describing the harmonious political situation during his reign as king, Kinbote mentions on page 75 that the people of Zembla had taken up parachuting as a hobby. Any country where the general populous can take up parachuting for fun must be a place of few worries or obligations. This small anecdote seems rather random and insignificant, which further adds to the country’s portrayal as peaceful and tranquil. Additionally, when Kinbote describes his escape from Zembla during the Zemblan Revolution, he mentions that there were many vacationers on the beach where he met Odon to flee the country. Indeed, it seems a little unlikely that a country could be in the midst of a violent revolution (the extremists were, after all, looking to kill the former king) yet still play host to foreigners on vacation. All of these descriptions of Zembla contribute to its depiction as an ultima thule, a fantastical land of innocent pursuits and great escapes, a land of, to borrow from Ibsen, “castles in the air.”

The next logical question regarding Zembla, after establishing its status as an ultima thule, would concern whether Zembla is a real place where Kinbote was king or whether the country is an invention of Kinbote’s imagination. Since Pale Fire is set in the middle of the twentieth century, the world would have already been thoroughly explored and mapped when Kinbote and John Shade were living in New Wye. Thus, if Zembla was “a distant northern land” that was outside the “borders of the known world,” it probably did not exist on Earth at all. This Zembla could have been an actual place in the time of Virgil, when the outer fringes of the world were still unknown, but in Kinbote’s time there would be no room for such a distant northern land on the map. Consequently, the unknown region where Zembla exists is most likely located completely within Kinbote’s imagination. If this were the case, some of the pieces of the puzzle would appear to fit together better. It would explain how the weak, elegant, and romantic Kinbote was able to be the king of a nation; as if the nation was his complete fabrication he would know best how to rule it. Zembla’s imaginary status would also account for some of the unlikely characteristics and apparent contradictions that Kinbote describes it as possessing – conditions which seem impossible for an actual country to exist in. Kinbote’s Zembla is thus no more tangible than Halvard Solness’s “castles in the air.”

Second rung of the ladder: Kinbote's validity as a literary critic

Something is amiss in the way Dr. Kinbote is interpreting John Shade’s poem. Kinbote attempts to connect obscure facts or occurrences in his life to several lines in the poem, assuming that Shade wrote the lines specifically in reference to subjects or events in which Kinbote has an interest. In a way, Kinbote seems to be reading too far into the poem and drawing obscure conclusions that Shade himself probably never intended. This pattern of Kinbote recklessly making connections to his own life is apparent from the beginning of his analysis, when he claims on page 74 that the phrase “crystal land” in line 12 of Shade’s poem is, “Perhaps an allusion to Zembla, my dear country.” This supposed reference to Zembla launches Kinbote into a discussion of Zemblan kings, which is clearly a subject he is interested in, but also a topic that seems to have nothing to do with the poem. It is odd that Kinbote would make such a specific connection when in the context of the poem, Shade uses “crystal land” to describe the landscape outside his window covered in snow on a winter morning. Even if “crystal land” was a reference to a certain place that Shade was fond of, how could Kinbote be so arrogant as to assume that it alluded to Zembla, a place in which Kinbote himself is interested? Making such an assumption would be similar to reading a poet’s description of some unknown town he viewed in a favorable light and automatically presuming that the poet was writing specifically about the reader’s hometown. These swift and murky conclusions that Kinbote draws seems to compromise his validity as a literary critic.

Kinbote later states that “One is too modest to suppose that the fact that the poet and his future commentator first met on a winter day somehow impinges here on the actual season,” (page 79). Here Kinbote is downplaying the suggestion that Shade drew heavily from images of winter even though the poem was written in the summer solely because Shade had met Kinbote during the winter. Kinbote claims that he is too modest to believe this idea, but even mentioning such a suggestion portrays arrogance. That Shade wrote his poem with the concept winter in mind only because he met one of his literary critics in winter appears to be such a ridiculous, unlikely suggestion that it portrays Kinbote as overly conceited and self centered for even proposing it. Shouldn’t he instead have devoted this sentence to, for example, discussing the similarities between the season of winter and the speaker’s emotions in the poem? Kinbote seems to overly involve his personal life when analyzing this poem, which is not a good habit for a supposedly objective commentator to employ.

Readers also learn on page 80 and 81 that Kinbote had some sort of influence on Shade’s writing of the poem. Kinbote claims that he tried to “saturate” Shade with images and descriptions of Zembla and that he was the one who convinced Shade to write the poem in the first place. It does not seem right that someone who played such an integral role in the composition of a poem should be the one who dissects and analyzes it in the end, especially when the analysis is littered with personal anecdotes that appear to have no relevance to the poem. Kinbote later attempts to back off assertions of his influence on Shade’s poem by stating “Oh yes, the final text of the poem is entirely his.” The off-handed nature of this statement at the end of a paragraph makes it seem rather suspicious – as if Kinbote is denying something that he knows he is guilty of. It all adds up to the relationship between poet and critic appearing to be not quite right. What exactly is the nature of the association between Kinbote and Shade? Did the critic actually play a larger role in writing the poem than he is letting on? Are John Shade and Charles Kinbote perhaps the same person? Such questions will be considered as I read further in Pale Fire.

What I think I know about Pale Fire

1. The editor of the manuscript, Dr. Charles Kinbote, has published a 999 word poem written by the poet John Shade and has attached additional commentary onto the end of the poem.
2. The poem, called Pale Fire, was written during the last twenty days of Shade’s life and is composed of four cantos.
3. Shade wrote the poem on index cards, with fourteen lines on each card.
4. Dr. Kinbote has had to struggle with Shade’s wife and several publishing companies in order to have the right to transcribe and analyze Pale Fire without anyone else’s consultation.
5. Shade believed in burning first drafts and other unused lines that he had written, but Dr. Kinbote was able to procure several stanzas that were not in the poem’s final version. These lines that didn’t make Shade’s final cut were documented in a short stack of index cards held together with a clip in the same envelope that contained the larger, rubber-banded stack of cards on which the last draft of the poem was written.


As an additional comment, I would say that so far I am a little confused on the structure of Pale Fire – that is, Pale Fire the book. I do not know whether to read the poem in its entirety first or to, like Kinbote suggests at the end of the Forward, read the commentary first and then go back and read the poem. It seems that in either case it will be initially difficult to understand the context of the writing. Perhaps I will instead read the commentary piecemeal and then go back and read the section of the poem it is analyzing. This method too is not without its flaws, as it may be difficult to gain a proper perspective of the work as a whole if it is read is such a fragmented fashion. I suppose that I’ll just have to try each of these approaches to reading Pale Fire and discover what seems to make the most sense. Trial and error is, after all, always an option.

Las Meninas: Abandoning the subject in favor of the periphery

In the opening chapter of The Order of Things, Michel Foucault provides an analysis of Velasquez’s painting “Las Meninas” and makes an interesting point regarding the subject versus everything else in the composition. In discussing the reflection in the mirror of the king and queen that can be seen in the rear of the room, Foucault suggests that even though the two monarchs capture the attention of the figures in the painting, the viewers outside the painting see the king and queen as insignificant. On page 14, Foucault writes, “Of all these figures represented before us, they are also the most ignored, since no one is paying the slightest attention to that reflection which has slipped into the room behind them all, silently occupying its unsuspected space; in so far as they are visible, they are the frailest and the most distant form of all reality.” Foucault here is referring to the reflection of the monarchs in the mirror that the viewer outside the painting sees, but that the individuals in the painting ignore. The omniscient viewers who witness but are not part of the scene can be seen as more objective, credible observers, and since we take little regard for the king and queen (we see only their stagnant reflection) perhaps the reality of the situation is indeed that the monarchs are less significant than the depicted spectators. If this interpretation is correct, it would conform to the idea of things that are “beside the point” having as much substance as the point itself. The painter and the whole crowd of observers are gathered for the purpose of seeing the king and queen, but it may just be that these spectators carry the greatest importance.

Foucault is possibly interpreting that Velasquez intended for the reflection of the monarchs to be some sort of statement regarding the relation of the center (the monarchs) to the periphery (everyone else in the painting). It would seem that because the periphery is actually the main subject of the painting, Velasquez was asserting that the fringe components are more important than the apparent central purpose. Was this some sort of disguised political or social statement? I tend to think that the ramifications of Velasquez’s portrayal of the monarchs in the mirror are of a broader nature. Perhaps he meant to apply the concept of the periphery and the center to a general system of thinking about the world. In the present day, we sometimes forsake the peripheral detail for the central purpose. Too often we are concerned with what “the point” is, instead of paying attention to everything else that is unique about a composition, idea, or structure. As we have found with the work of Henrik Ibsen, and now with Velasquez, it is the little things that often carry the greatest significance. Perhaps Foucault saw this neglect of the periphery in the modern paradigm of logic, and thus wished to portray an example of Classical Age thought where what was “beside the point” was the central purpose. Regardless of Foucault’s intent for including a discussion of “Las Meninas,” he does well to present the concept of looking past the subject and into the realm of the periphery.

A few final thoughts on Ibsen

After reading and discussing several Henrik Ibsen plays, I have come to appreciate the importance of details in his work. The guns that appear in the scene description at the beginning of Hedda Gabler, the rocks that Dr. Stockmann saves in An Enemy of the People, and the white shawl worn by Mrs. Solness at the end of The Master Builder all have significance to the symbolism and meaning that Ibsen is attempting to portray. It is not enough to read Ibsen by cutting straight to the gist and skipping over the details, as the details themselves are as important as the overarching conclusions that readers may draw from his work. In this way, those who read Henrik Ibsen must take a scientific approach to his plays, much like Ibsen himself took a scientific approach to developing his characters. The scientist is always concerned with the details, the bits and pieces of information that may lead to a great discovery or a new theory. If one simply concentrates on the big picture, he/she will in all likelihood overlook the very elements that together comprise the essence of the subject in question. To modify a common adage, it is not enough to simply understand the forest, as the concept of forest is meaningless without an awareness of the individual trees. So it is with Ibsen’s plays as well – we must not neglect the little things, as the specific details add up to yield an understanding that would be lacking in their absence.

The particulars in Ibsen’s plays are also vital to readers’ comprehension of the themes because Ibsen draws heavily from mythology and from other works of literature. These literary allusions are not laid out on the table for readers, but are instead deftly placed within scene descriptions or quick conversations between characters. For example, the differences in Ibsen’s descriptions of Hedda and Mrs. Elvsted’s hair near the beginning of Hedda Gabler serves as the first clue to these characters’ inner qualities. Hedda is described as having hair that is “an attractive medium-brown but not particularly full,” (page 296) while Mrs. Elvsted’s hair is “remarkably light, almost a white gold and exceptionally rich and full,” (page 300). The differing hair qualities of these two women serves as a representation of their lives and personalities, as Mrs. Elvsted is fertile in the sense that she can produce ideas and cultivate them with action while Hedda is sterile in that she is limited to passive inaction and lives vicariously through the experiences of others. Later on, readers discover that Hedda is envious of Mrs. Elvsted’s hair and even threatens to burn Mrs. Elvsted’s hair off, which further emphasizes the symbolic difference between these two characters. In this way, Ibsen is portraying hair as a symbol of strength, which alludes to the biblical story of Sampson. This important literary connection and metaphorical significance would be lost to readers who did not give serious consideration to scene descriptions when these two characters entered the play. This example serves as further evidence that those who take the approach of the scientist and who critically analyze the details get the most out of Ibsen’s plays. With Ibsen’s own affinity to the scientific approach, it’s hard to believe these rewards for the close reader were anything but intentional.

Reaction to Wild Duck truth vs lie discussion

We had an interesting discussion last Thursday in class regarding the benefits and drawbacks of the differing philosophies of Dr. Relling and Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck. Relling avoids telling his patients the distressing truth about their conditions and instead deliberately manufactures lies to keep them going. Gregers, on the other hand, is more of an idealist and believes that he must break the truth to Hjalmar about his wife, even if such knowledge will initially be distressing to Hjalmar. When Hjalmar eventually learns the truth, he is extremely upset, and his emotions eventually lead to the suicide of his daughter Hedvig. That in The Wild Duck such a destructive act is portrayed as the end result of divulging the truth would suggest that Ibsen was a proponent of the “life-lie.” Ibsen believed, like Relling in the play, that if an individual has a certain truth that is comforting and beneficial to him/her, this truth should be cultivated and encouraged by everyone around the individual, even if the ‘truth’ is actually a fallacy. This is an interesting view on the human experience, as it advocates that comfort and peace of mind are more important than discovering the true nature of our existence. Perhaps Ibsen thought that humans are incapable of handling the truth, and that our very existence depends on the promotion of certain lies. This view is similar to that held by the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, who criticizes Christ for giving to mankind the concept of freedom, which is a great burden rather than a gift. Thus, freedom and truth, two principles that are commonly connected with happiness (especially in the United States), are portrayed as harmful to the human psyche in The Brothers Karamazov and The Wild Duck, respectively.

I claimed on Thursday that I came out on the side of Gregers, that I would rather know the truth than live a “life-lie.” I’ve done some thinking on this subject over the past few days and my opinion hasn’t really changed, though it’s possible it will change with further life experiences. As Madeleine pointed out in our class discussion, perpetuating lies for sheer comfort or convenience can be destructive, especially if such lies are spread throughout the whole of society. For example, if the government were to falsely claim that a major spill at a nuclear power plant was small and that it would not have any adverse affects on the environment or the communities near the plant simply to pacify the public, such a lie could prevent the appropriate action from being taken to clean up the spill. What is comforting or easy is not always right, and what it right is sometimes difficult to handle, but this should not prevent the truth from coming out. I would much rather be told the truth and act accordingly than be lulled into a blind sense of comfort by fabrications meant to keep me going.

An interpretation of the relationship between Mrs. Solness and Hilda

At the end of class on Tuesday, we had a discussion about how in The Master Builder, Mrs. Solness and Hilda had a relationship similar to that of Demeter and Persephone and how the two may have been co-conspirators who worked toward the demise of Halvard Solness. At first, this idea does not seem to fit, as Hilda and Mrs. Solness initially appear to have a rather chilly relationship. For example, Hilda becomes upset when Mrs. Solness claims that it’s her “duty” to go buy new clothes for Hilda, and Hilda remarks “She could have said she’d do it because she liked me so much. Something like that, she might have said. Something truly warm and heartfelt, don’t you see?” (page 389). At this point in the play it seems unlikely that Mrs. Solness and Hilda could work together for a common result, as they do not have a good relationship. Their relationship changes, however, after the two have a talk on the veranda about the fire that destroyed Mrs. Solness’s house and that led to the deaths of the twin boys. As they part at the end of this conversation, Mrs. Solness says “And let’s be friends, Miss Wangel, can’t we?” to which Hilda replies “Oh, if only we could,” while the two share a hug (page 408). This illustrates that Hilda and Mrs. Solness have managed to find a way to get along with each other, which is important to the idea that they are working together against Solness, as cooperative action is difficult if there is no common ground between the players. This sense of cooperative action between these two characters finally rises to the forefront near the end of the play when Mrs. Solness encourages Hilda to “hold fast” to Halvard Solness and to convince him not to climb the tower on the new house (page 416). Hilda ends up doing just the opposite and persuades Solness to climb to the top of his tower after all, which at first would seem to oppose the idea that she was working together with Mrs. Solness. After further consideration, however, it does not make sense that Mrs. Solness would trust Hilda to be alone with Halvard Solness and to convince him not to climb the tower, especially after Hilda had previously expressed her fascination with seeing Solness at the top of the church tower in Lysanger. Perhaps Mrs. Solness knew all along that Hilda would encourage Solness to climb the tower, and perhaps Mrs. Solness actually desired the final outcome of her husband falling from the scaffolding. Throughout the entire play, Halvard Solness’s relationship with his wife is basically nonexistent, and it would be understandable if Mrs. Solness was ready for her husband to move on. Additionally, it would make sense for Hilda to be working toward Solness’s demise, as she is a manifestation of his “trolls and devils” (which is itself a topic for another blog). With all of these factors considered, it seems valid to interpret Mrs. Solness and Hilda as co-conspirators in the death of Halvard Solness.

Ibsen and Individualism

In the article “Ibsen and Mimesis” that is posted as a link on Shelby’s blog, Otto Reinert (the author) makes an interesting point regarding Halvard Solness’s feeling of guilt in The Master Builder. Reinert writes on page 223 that “The Master Builder is a play about the inner anguish of guilt and fear, the obstinate ambition, and the erotic fantasies of an aging egotist, whose achievements have become instruments of torture.” Solness repeatedly makes reference to the fact that he feels guilty for all of his successes and that his previous “luck” is now a source of anguish. This is because his accomplished career as a master builder was made possible only through harm to others. For example, Solness’s first opportunity to build houses arose from the fire that destroyed his wife’s family’s home and that has since caused his wife incessant grief. Additionally, the ascension in his building career directly corresponded to the demise of Knut Brovik’s business, as Solness effectively displaced and ruined Brovik’s career while pushing to get to the top. These examples illustrate one of the realities that Ibsen wished to illuminate in this play – that the fates of all humans are related and that the rise of an individual toward his goals necessitates the fall of another from his aspirations.

Reinert goes on to comment that “This is the essence of an Ibsen tragedy: by some immutable law self-realization through self-transcendence entails transgression against others. That theme is also the most radical challenge to individualism in all of modern drama,” (page 223). Besides it’s obvious relation to The Master Builder, this concept is also present in An Enemy of the People, where Dr. Stockmann’s great discovery does not unite the townspeople but instead threatens their economic wellbeing and forces Peter Stockmann to push back against his brother. This is Ibsen illustrating the dualistic nature of the human quest for self-affirmation: for every individual who wishes to accomplish a goal there is another individual who would be negatively affected if such a goal were realized. As Reinert points out, Ibsen is effectively undermining the validity of individualism through this argument. If pursuing our own aspirations leads to the injury of another, are we justified in chasing after our goals? Where should the line be drawn between justifiably following our own desires and inexcusably holding others back? These are the types of questions that tormented Halvard Solness in The Master Builder, and Ibsen seems to give no resolution to this qualm in the play. With Solness’s tragic fall from the top of his own house, Ibsen is suggesting that this contradiction between self-affirmation and assistance to others is an essential component of human nature, and that it is impossible to escape from its grasp. Thus, Ibsen again is able to deftly illuminate a difficulty that is inherent in the human experience and to encourage examining the subject of individualism with a critical eye.

Halvard Solness and the paradox of desire

In Henrik Ibsen’s play The Master Builder, Halvard Solness has the unique condition in which he is afraid of that for which he longs. He believes that he only needs to wish for something to happen in order for his “helpers and servers” (which he later refers to as “trolls and devils”) to carry out that task, effectively allowing Solness to will an occurrence to come about. For example, Solness explains to Hilda why he feels responsible for the fire that destroyed Mrs. Solness’s family’s house and killed their two sons when he remarks on page 398, “Who called for the helpers and servers? I did! And so they came and submitted to my will.” In this case, Solness’s “will” was that his wife’s house burn down so that he would have an opportunity to divide up the estate and build more houses, thus setting off his career ascension to a master builder. He feels that because he secretly fantasized about such an event, it ended up occurring after all through the actions of the helpers and servers. This is where Solness’s fear for that which he desires comes from, and he accordingly is reluctant to embrace any of his aspirations, including his wish for his wife’s happiness. He claims to do everything in his power to make his wife happy again by, for example, building a new, exquisite house on the land where the house that burned down used to stand, but in reality he cannot fully commit to fostering Mrs. Solness’s happiness. This is because for Mrs. Solness to truly be content, Halvard Solness would have to reduce his work as a master builder and settle down with his wife. Solness is unwilling to do this because he is paranoid that if he lets up at all, the younger generation, specifically his apprentice Ragnor, will displace him from his position as a renowned master builder. In this way, Solness is reluctant to desire too strongly for his wife’s happiness, as he fears that if the “helpers and servers” work toward this end, his career will be destroyed at the hands of the next generation.

Similarly, though Solness is afraid of the youth (“You’ll see, youth will come here and thunder at the door. Smash their way in to me.” page 382), he also subconsciously longs for the youth. He seems to be reinvigorated by the arrival of Hilda, even though she represents the younger generation that, literally and figuratively, is knocking at Solness’s door. This contradiction of desire and fear is illuminated on page 400 and 401, where Solness admits that he has been longing for the youth that Hilda embodies. After Hilda reminds Solness that he is fearful of the youth by asking “Youth, which you are so afraid of?” Solness replies “And yet which, deep within, I long for so painfully.” This sequence proves that Solness does indeed long for the strength and vitality of the youth, even though these are the exact traits that he fears. It is thus that the paradox is solidified: Solness fears what he desires and yearns for that which he most alarmed by.

Dr. Stockmann: a free man?

Throughout An Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann prides himself on being a free man who acts independently of the opinions and wishes of others. He chooses to pursue the truth in the form of scientific findings instead of following the townspeople’s desire to promote the baths. At one point while arguing with his brother Peter, Dr. Stockmann boldly proclaims “There is only one single thing in the world a free man has no right to do…A free man has no right to soil himself with filth; he has no right to behave in a way that would justify his spitting in his own face,” (pg 275). In this way, Dr. Stockman is suggesting that all free men have a duty to be true to themselves and to follow their own convictions instead of feeling obligated to join with the popular opinion. But a free man can also change his own course of action without trepidation, which is something Dr. Stockman seems incapable of performing. He is so rooted in his views of the danger of the baths that he is, in a sense, trapped by his scientific findings. For example, Dr. Stockmann eventually comes to realize that exposing the flaws of the baths will have ill effects on his family in the form of the entire town turning against his household, but he cannot seem to break away from, or at least modify the presentation of, his controversial ideas. Thus, Dr. Stockmann is a free man in one sense but not the other. He is strong in his convictions and free from the influence of others’ dissuasion, but he is so engaged in his own ideas that he is inseparable from them.

This concept of being independent of the wishes of others and totally inseparable from one’s own ideas is present in other literature as well, specifically Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons. The main character in this play, Sir Thomas More, is eventually executed for refusing to take an oath declaring King Henry VIII the head of the Church of England. Like Dr. Stockmann, Thomas More remains steadfast in his ideals even when there is enormous pressure to do otherwise. It is as if both Thomas More and Dr. Stockmann are unable to part from their prior beliefs, even as the situations surrounding them collapse. The obstinacy of both of these characters directly endangers their families, and each wife makes several unsuccessfully attempts to convince her husband to modify his stance. Thus, the refusal of Thomas More and Dr. Stockmann to part with their convictions, even with the wellbeing of their respective families on the line, illustrates how a man can be free from the influence of others, but not always free from his own thoughts.

Dr. Stockmann and Truth

In Act IV of Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann makes a rather bold statement about the longevity of truth. In his animated speech to the public and his principle adversaries he states, “What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports?” and goes on to answer his own question by saying “They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.” In these comments Dr. Stockmann is suggesting that there are no universal truths that transcend generations and that, instead, each generation must employ its own great thinkers to discover some new region of understanding or to modify what was previously taken as truth. The implications of such an argument are substantial, as to constantly be refining elemental truths could possibly throw a society into disarray. Imagine if, as Dr. Stockmann is proposing, our society suddenly changed its opinion regarding majority rule and instead let a few enlightened elites run the government without public input. A change such as this would totally overthrow our system of democracy. But it is exactly these kinds of dramatic change that Dr. Stockmann wants, as he sees the need for a paradigm shift in the opinions of the masses. Almost the entire town is against him in placing science and public health above politics and economics, and he therefore wishes for a complete revolution in thinking. In a sense, Dr. Stockmann wants not only for the townspeople to accept the fact that the baths are unsanitary, but also for the masses to be more accommodating to the ideas of “the scattered few amongst us, who have absorbed new and vigorous truths.”

Dr. Stockmann’s own sense of truth also changes considerably throughout the play. Specifically, he originally believes in the value of the majority’s support, but later comes to distance himself from the masses and claim that the common people base their judgments on lies. In Act II after speaking with Aslaksen, Dr. Stockmann answers his wife’s question regarding the worth of having the “compact majority” behind him by remarking, “I should think it was a good thing. By jove, it’s a fine thing to feel this bond of brotherhood between oneself and one’s fellow-citizens!” But as public support for his scientific findings wanes, Dr. Stockmann comes to adopt a less positive outlook towards the masses, which culminates in his heated speech at Captain Horster’s house in which Dr. Stockmann claims that “it is the masses, the majority – this infernal compact majority – that poisons the sources of our moral life and infects the ground we stand on.” It is hence that Dr. Stockmann’s impression of the compact majority changes from one of a strong respect to one of absolute disdain as the play progresses. Thus, Dr. Stockmann’s truth regarding the masses is altered as a result of the changing external circumstances that envelope him.

The Relevance of Collections

The concept of collection is a recurring motif in The Biographer’s Tale. Destry-Scholes’ collection of marbles mystifies Nanson and Vera, Fulla reminisces about collecting insects as a child, and even some of the seemingly random lists that Nanson comes across can be interpreted as collections of “things and facts.” Fulla talks to Nanson about her childhood fascination with insect collection on page 246: “Then I got interested in fitting the bugs together. Then into fitting the insect world into the rest of the world. Boxes in boxes.” This comment illustrates that collecting is one of the numerous ways in which humans attempt to construct order out of the world around them. When assembling collections, the collector generally strives to have at least one of each type of whatever they are collecting. For example, Destry-Scholes’ marble collection most likely had at least one marble of every color in addition to marbles with further color variations. The next logical step to making a collection is to group items into different categories according to some attribute. This is essentially what Fulla was doing when she was “fitting the bugs together” – putting, for instance, the flying insects in one category and the crawling insects in another. This act of classifying collections seems to be ingrained in the human mind, and we often perform it without conscious effort. To observe this phenomenon, simply give out packets of Skittles to a class of third grade students during a lesson. It is likely that many students will absentmindedly pour out the candies onto their desks and make neat little groupings according to color. The point is that humans cannot help but to attempt to make order out of everything with which we interact, and collections are but one method in which we go about doing this.

Though collections are commonly associated with children, adults perform the same act, albeit with more advanced methods. Taxonomy, for example, is essentially a more scientific form of making collections, as the taxonomist assembles a large assortment of whatever he/she is studying before grouping the subjects and making judgments on their interrelatedness. Thus, Linnaeus was in a way going through the same process that children go through when he was journeying around Lapland, collecting specimens, putting them into classes, and giving them genus and species names accordingly. Perhaps this is why Destry-Scholes was so interested in Linnaeus, because he saw Linnaeus as someone who was following that fundamentally human desire to collect, classify, and ultimately order that which we do not completely understand.

Ibsen as a scientist

When Nanson first discovers the three documents, he is perplexed as to why Destry-Scholes would include an excerpt of a biography of a dramatist alongside articles about a taxonomist and a statistician. A dramatist whose work relies on creativity and imagination doesn’t belong in the same class as scientists who are concerned with facts and objectivity, Nanson originally believes. On closer inspection, however, both Nanson and the novel’s readers learn that the dramatist, Henrick Ibsen, is of a unique mold and actually goes about his work with the systematic, calculated precision of a scientist. As he is quoted as remarking on page 99, Ibsen has an established process for getting to know the fictional characters about which he writes. His three-step routine for getting to know his characters as acquaintances on a train, then as friends going to the same spa for a month, and finally as intimate friends who hide no secrets bears close resemblance to the scientific method. It is as if the first step is the initial observation and hypothesis, where Ibsen has to make conjectures regarding many of the unknowns of his characters; the second level is the data gathering and initial analysis, where more information is gathered about his characters but coherent interpretation is still lacking; and the third level is the conclusion, where Ibsen has taken into account all of the facts and has accordingly formulated a complete model that penetrates into the very core of his characters. Ibsen also employs scientific objectivity when considering the characters he writes about. As he comments on page 100, “But the human being is in a spiritual sense a long-sighted creature. We see most clearly at a distance; details confuse us; we must get away from what we desire to judge; summer is best described on a winter day.” It thus appears that Ibsen was confronted with a balancing act when becoming acquainted with his characters, as he wished to drill into their innermost nuances while still keeping a measured distance, observing their beating hearts through the lens of a telescope.

With such dedication to owning his characters without getting tangled up in subjectivity and favoritism, it is no wonder that Ibsen’s desire to distance himself from other humans carried over to his personal life. As he states on page 101, “I have a feeling that all I have available in personal relations is a false expression of that which I bear deep within me, and which is really myself; therefore I prefer to keep it locked up inside, and that is why we sometimes seem to stand as if we were observing each other at a distance.” It is as if all of Ibsen’s character analysis has conditioned him to know himself too well, and to recognize that he is incapable of accurately expressing that which is inside him. Perhaps all humans are similarly unable to express what is hidden deep down – we simply do not seriously contemplate this inability because we have less of an understanding of it than did the scientific Ibsen. It could be that Ibsen insisted on distancing himself from friends because he did not want others to see what he observed in his inner nature, which was a haunting portrait of the human framework. It is thus that Ibsen was both a scientist who was able to probe into the human condition as few have been able to, as well as a man who struggled to separate his obsession from his personality.

The idea of "rage" at Key West

Last Thursday we concluded class with a discussion on the importance of the word “rage” in the final stanza of “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Brianna made a great point that Wallace Stevens could very well have employed the term to caution readers that humans’ obsessive search for order can have detrimental effects on that which we are trying to make orderly. For example, our society’s fixation on constructing perfectly laid out subdivisions for families to raise their children has come at the cost of destroying valuable wildlife habitat and important ecosystems, especially here in the western United States. This connects with the idea that to control and to make order out of something wild is to kill it, as our pursuit to develop the land has ultimately led to its destruction. So perhaps Wallace Stevens desired to warn the audience that while humans will always be comforted by finding a sense of higher order, creating order out of our surroundings inevitably leads to the ruin of the fundamental structure of these surroundings.

Such an interpretation of Stevens’ message resides in the reader’s concentration on the negative aspects of the word “rage.” Rage is a potent emotion that can lend itself to senseless destruction. Literature often portrays characters who are blinded by rage and who thus commit offenses that they normally would not, such as Othello’s murder of Desdemona when he becomes inconsolably troubled at allegations that his wife has been unfaithful. With an effect similar to that of a blind rage, the singular quest for order may leave humans ignorant of the havoc that such a narrow-minded pursuit brings.

I, however, had a different interpretation of the term “rage” the first few times that I read Stevens’ poem. I continue to stand by the argument I made in class that deep within the confines of rage there exists a positive quality to take away from an otherwise destructive emotion. There are few human emotions, with the exception of love, that contain the sheer power and intensity that rage possesses. Although in a strict sense this great strength is put to detrimental use when someone is in a rage, it might be possible to channel the force and empowerment of rage into superior objectives. For example, in my career as a competitive runner in high school, I would often draw from the concept of rage to make myself put as much energy and effort as possible into a race. It helped to visualize myself “raging” with my arms and legs pumping wildly during, say, the last lap of a 3200 meter race. I don't think that I would have been able to go as hard in those races if I had focused on euphoria, bewilderment, or any number of other emotions. Another case of rage being portrayed in a positive light comes from Dylan Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle into that good night." The speaker of this poem attempts to convince his dying father to not give into the ease of death and to instead fight to keep living with the refrain "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." In this sense, rage is seen as a quality of the living and as a powerful feeling that can be harnessed to overcome adverse circumstances. With the famous refrain, Thomas asserts that rage is associated with life and is thus a higher emotion than indifference, which will forever be connected with death. Finally, Wallace Stevens' use of the word "blessed" in the first line of the final stanza in"The Idea of Order at Key West" may suggest that he wished to characterize our desperate search for order as not necessarily destructive, but as genuinely human and as sustained by the "maker." Perhaps Stevens was hinting that we are all destined to passionately seek order and that this pursuit is fundamentally connected to our vitality. In summation, I contend that the more positive aspects of rage not be overlooked when interpretting the last stanza of "The Idea of Order at Key West."

Response to Bizz B's post "He's real and solid but we still don't know the guy"

I tried to comment on Bizz's actual blog wall but I wasn't able to. I'll try to play around more and figure out how to do that. In the meantime, here's my response to her post:

I agree with Bizz that Nanson knows little of himself at the beginning of the novel, as he thinks more of concepts than of facts. His switch in emphasis to biography is beneficial, as not only does he begin to see the world in terms of the tangible, but he also begins to act instead of just think. What I mean by this is that Nanson goes out into the world and, in the process of searching for facts about Destry-Scholes, discovers how to be a human being. For instance, he gets a job and begins to interact with women, two aspects that most people would consider to be good indications of a functioning member of society. The root cause of this transformation is Nanson's decision to abandon post-modernist philosophy for biography. So basically, as we have already discussed in class, Nanson's pursuit of facts about Destry-Scholes leads Nanson to discover facts about himself, and by knowing himself he begins to truly live.

Reconciling magic and science

Scholes Destry-Scholes describes both Linnaeus and Galton experiencing supernatural events in the excepts of each man’s biography. Destry-Scholes seems to see a strong connection between magic and science, as on page 53 he comments that “Magic is closely entwined with science; alchemy, the occult sciences, astrology, however strange or to modern man unacceptable their systems of belief or projects, resemble the true sciences in their preoccupation with techniques of studying, and changing, the physical world.” This is quite the statement, as it suggests that science is concerned with not only “studying” the physical world, but also with “changing” the physical world. In other words, science seeks to transform things and facts into something they are not. Magic too is performed with the purpose of transforming and bending reality. The question then arises of which act better portrays a greater meaning, which act is a closer representation of order. The most common response to such a question, if presented to the general population, would probably be that a greater sense of order is derived from science than from magic because science explains observations while magic appears to defy what we see. But it is possible that reality is not what the eye sees and that our observations of the world around us are in some way distorted. If this is in fact the case, it would be inaccurate to base our conceptions of order on simple observations. This would mean that science is a deception of order and that perhaps magic better represents the order that all humans crave to find.

Reading into Destry-Scholes’ remarks this far is possibly overstepping the bounds of what he desired to confer, but it is clear that he wanted his readers to consider the value of magic in gaining a greater understanding of a worldly order. This is further evidenced by the fact that Destry-Scholes embellished the supernatural experiences of Galton and Linnaeus. In both cases there was but a seed of these scientists experiencing something magical or supernatural and Destry-Scholes extended these pieces of information to make up the stories of Linnaeus’ spirit exiting his body in the Lapland and Galton looking into a fire and witnessing a lifelike vision of corpses on a beach. At the very least, this illustrates that Destry-Scholes was deeply interested in the connection between magic and science and that he wished to convey this connection to his readers. And perhaps he realized that a statistician and a taxonomist were ultimately pursuing the same goal as a magician; that is the portrayal of the relationship between a higher order and what we as humans observe in our surroundings.

Finding things and facts from within: comments on The Biographer's Tale

Phineas G. Nanson abandons his study of postmodern literary theory and sets out to write a biography of the great biographer Scholes Destry-Scholes because, as Nanson articulates to one of his professors, “I need a life full of things, full of facts,” (page 7). Nanson begins to find, however, that Destry-Scholes has left few things or facts behind, and the little that is left behind is difficult to understand. Instead, Nanson increasingly derives his facts from himself as the novel becomes more about his interactions with various people and his responses when put in different situations than about his research of Destry-Scholes. Nanson thus discovers that “things and facts” can only come from within, and that his search for knowledge of a concrete nature has ultimately led to his own self. This connects with Rene Descartes often quoted line “I think, therefore I am,” as Nanson finds that the only true knowledge he can acquire is that which regards himself. In the end, this idea is all that Nanson or any human being can count on as true fact. One can attempt to find concrete knowledge of another through biography, but as Destry-Scholes illustrated in his embellishments and falsifications of the adventures of Linnaeus and Galton, everything is tainted by the biographer’s own presuppositions. Nanson comments on the impossibility of removing the writer from the story on page 248, “I now wonder…whether all writing has a tendency to flow like a river towards the writer’s body and the writer’s own experience?” He is correct in his assessment that all writing eventually leads back to oneself, as to write is, at its heart, to attempt to find concrete things or facts, and these things and facts can only be derived from within.

As a part of discovering the things and facts about himself, Nanson finds that the sense of order he seeks is present in science. Specifically, he comes to appreciate nature and its beings as genuine indications of a higher order. He remarks that “the senses of order and wonder, both, that I had once got from literature, I now found more easily and directly in the creatures,” (page 294). Similar to how Linnaeus found order in his classification system of biota, Nanson derives a sense of order from observing the interrelatedness of creatures in the natural world, from the way beetles joust for a mate to his own interactions with Fulla and Vera. Nanson himself, as a human being, is one of these creatures of the natural world, and it is fitting that his exploration and fascination with nature coincides with his discovery of the things and facts within him. As is remarked with regard to Henrik Ibsen in one of Destry-Scholes’ passages, all humans in some way possess the same qualities as creatures in nature. Perhaps by looking at nature Nanson was actually looking inside himself, and as such, establishing another means to achieve “things and facts.”

Reaction to "The Idea of Order at Key West"

As we briefly discussed in class, Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Idea of Order at Key West” is about the relationship between imagination and reality. The speaker, who is observing a seaside sunset, is captivated by something he detects that is beyond the scope of the ocean. He describes that ‘something’ as a song that is sung by an unknown female entity. It is clear that the song “she” sings is superior to that of the ocean’s song, as evidenced by the first line of the poem, “She sang beyond the genius of the sea.” The speaker is intrigued by some quality in the female entity’s song that he cannot find in the sea, and although the sea and the song may on the surface appear to be one in the same, the song possesses something that the sea lacks. This concept is supported in the last line of the second stanza, which makes the distinction between the sea and “her” song: “But it was she and not the sea we heard.” It is here that Stevens is making a distinction between imagination and reality, as the sea is a symbol for reality while “she” stands for imagination. Stevens is not necessarily asserting that the concept of imagination is in all aspects superior to reality, but he is trying to convey the idea that in the pursuit of meaning and order, one’s imagination is perhaps more valuable than any reality. Thus, in order to discover “ourselves and our origins” (second to last line of the poem), we must look beyond a thin reality and enter the realm of our imaginations.


That a greater sense of understanding and order will come from considering the imagination is an interesting suggestion, as the concept of imagination is more often associated with fantasy than with truth. But with further consideration, Stevens’ idea begins to make sense. The reality that we as humans perceive is one of apparent randomness. Sure, there are aspects of our reality that do seem orderly and predictable (such as the laws of physics), but there are many more events, circumstances, and facets of the real word that have no understood meaning or order. One of the only realms in which humans can exhibit control of their world is in the imagination, and out of this control can come a cerebral order of things. Just as “She was the single artificer of the world/ In which she sang,” (lines 17-18 of stanza 4), our world can be what our imagination constructs if we allow the imagination greater reign. And this complete application of the human imagination to intellectual discovery is perhaps the only way we will ever discover our own order.