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.