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.