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

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up to twenty pages. Dates (204),. syllables (77), and
the fortuitous juxtaposition of letters in two adjoining
words in a variant (231) are for him charged
with meanings which are all connected with his Zemblan
fantasy.
This, he says, is the material he gave to Shade,
and this is what inspired the poet, even though it
may not seem so at first sight. It looks, he says, as
if "the final text of Pale Fire [had] been deliberately
and drastically drained of every trace of the material
I contributed" (81), and this comes as a great
shock to him when he first reads the poem and finds
it "void of my magic, of that special rich streak of
magical madness which I was sure would run through it
and make it transcend its time" (296-297). Then he
reads it again and finds in it a "dim distant music",
"echoes and spangles of my mind, a long ripple-wake
of my glory" (297). It is all there, after all, he
feels; the poem is his, he is "the only begetter"
(17). He insists that this is also why it is only
with the help of his notes that the poem can be appreciated;
in fact, the notes should be consulted
first. Only through them will the "human reality" of
the poem come to life. (28-29).
With this the ultimate peak of absurdity and com-
edy has been reached. The basic assumptions of the
genre have been turned upside down. The notes which
so absurdly twist and misinterpret the contents of
the poem as to render it unrecognizable, completely
overshadow what little there is in the way of real