''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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learn anything, to wrap it up in a shining coat of
erudite language and to offer it with great officiousness
as valuable material is confirmed in the
commentary. Kinbote proves his-pedantry by commenting
on obvious images like the one in lines 1-4 (73-74),
by explaining who Sherlock Holmes was (78), or by
writing a lengthy (and purely speculative) note on
what a dash in a discarded line of the draft might
stand for (167-168). His compulsion to comment on the
perfectly obvious leads to hilarious results, like
his note on line 584 (231). The line is quite clear
as it stands, no note is needed. It remains unclear
why Kinbote should want to render half of the line
in German. The German "translation" is wrong in two
respects. The note to line 664 to which he refers
the reader, does not exist (there is a note on line
662, with reference to 664), and what he there has to
say about Goethe's ballad does nothing to explicate
either of the two lines. At such moments (as also in
his note to line 615: "two tongues" [235]) and at
many others, too, his commentary ceases altogether to
be one. What remains is only the form devoid of all
meaning.
This insistently scholarly form is often in comic
contrast not only with the negligible contents, but
also with Kinbote's apparent ignorance op various
points. He is guilty of negligence where pedantry
would be appropriate (instead of where he is a pedant)
and of inaccuracies, both of which Nabokov finds in-
excusable in a scholar and which he exposes and