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.