Presentations Day 3 and 4

            First of all I would like to say that every presentation on the novel Pale Fire was amazing and I have really enjoyed listening to everyone’s discoveries on the text.  Morgan’s Alphabet Book is fantastic.  I believe that the concept of the book itself encompasses several ideas that can be found in the text.  The alphabet book moving from A-Z echoes the strategic alphabetizing of the Goldsworth and the Zemblan Royal family names along with Mrs. Goldsworth’s library and the three lakes of New Wye Appalachia of Omega, Ozero, and Zero.  I also believe that Morgan’s Alphabet Book illustrates the notion of learning; children learn to correlate specific words with a specific letter while in Pale Fire, Nabokov succeeds in ripping apart the reader’s episteme and putting it back together in a new configuration to form a completely new alphabet book.    

            Isabel’s depiction of the Erl King was extremely interesting and I particularly enjoyed the significance of the alder tree itself.  It is mind boggling how just one small puzzle piece found in the texture of Pale Fire can hold such great significance.  Specifically I thought the discovery of the alder tree correlating to the tree of fire and the Celtic tree calendar was fascinating.  The tree being linked to the third lunar year illustrates another glimmer of evidence into Nabokov’s use of the number 3. 

            Maria’s perspective on the creation of Kinbote through memory palaces and genetic modification I thought was really eye opening and helped me gain further insight into all of the potential formations of the characters.  I feel as though Nabokov created a Rubix Cube with a completely new set of rules and tricks that make it almost impossible to completely understand the true identity of the characters but I think Maria’s process of breaking the characters apart almost scientifically for analysis would be a method that Nabokov would have liked. 

            Dustin’s focus in his presentation of pseudoreality was intriguing and thought provoking.  I particularly liked the reference to Eutopia.  I had never heard of the definition of a Eutopia as a vantage point but the reference to Pale Fire as a Eutopia I thought to be ingenious.  I also found the topic of the finite versus the infinite to be a topic that is extremely relevant throughout the text of Pale Fire where Nabokov toys with our perspective of the world through its obscure structure. 

            I thought James did a great job at illustrating the importance of Zembla in Pale Fire with the description of its origin and the creation of its meaning on a higher level by Virgil to be essential to fully appreciation of the concept of the Ultima Thule.  I especially liked the description of it as the far north being of ice that is on “the world’s dizzying edges.”  James also did a great job tying the Ultima Thule in with all of the other texts that we have read throughout the semester.        

            The parallel of the construction of the mandala with Nabokov’s creation of Pale Fire, I thought was incredible and actually created a completely new frame of mind to take shape for my outlook on the novel.  The description of the mandala as the archetype of wholeness fits perfectly with the novel.  It reminds me of a passage from Speak Memory where Nabokov states:

“The spiral is a spiritualized circle.  In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, unwound, has been set free….Twirl follows twirl, and every synthesis is the thesis of the next series….We can call “thetic” the small curve or arc that initiates the convolution centrally; “antithetic” the larger arc that faces the first in the process of continuing it; and “synthetic” the still ampler arc that continues the second while following the first along the outer side.  And so on” (Speak Memory, 275)

 

Reflection Part 1 of Presentations

            The presentations by Ashley, Nels, Bizz, Jenny, Breanna, Michael, and Madeline have all been incredibly fascinating.   Every aspect of Pale Fire that is illustrated in the presentations has emphasized what Shelby initially stated in her blog; that everything is relevant.  The continuous transformations of Pale Fire amaze me.  Bizz and Jenny illustrated through their presentation that Pale Fire that apart from the normal method of absorbing the novel through reading it can be illustrated through its palpable pages creating a trompe l’oeil.  It reminded me of the description of Eystein’s method of decorating his portraits with the material further imitated by the paint:

“This device which was apparently meant to enhance the effect or tactile and tonal values had, however something ignoble about it and disclosed not only an essential flaws in Eystein’s talent, but the basic fact that “reality” is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average “reality” perceived by the communal eye” (Pale Fire, 130).

Perception I believe is a key motif in Pale Fire that is displayed in one form or the other throughout everyone’s investigation of the novel.  Nels I believe displayed this by correlating Pale Fire to “The Idea of Order at Key West.”  He illustrated "singing the song" an idea that I think Nabokov would have loved which I think is best described in a quote from Strong Opinions:

“As an artist and scholar I prefer the specific detail to the generalization, images to ideas, obscure facts to clear symbols, and the discovered wild fruit to the synthetic jam.”

Organic chemistry I believe is a science that encompasses great beauty and obscurity.  It is the investigation of the human life force at a fundamental and microscopic level that holds several parallels to Nabokov’s possessing the passion of a scientist and precision of a poet.  It is at this detailed and complex level that a slight configuration in a molecular formula catalyzes a significant change to be induced in the human body. 

The notion of perception can thus be further exemplified through the structure of the human eye.   The eye is composed of two key types of photoreceptors that detect the light channeled through the pupil called cones and rods.  The cones are only arranged at the center of the eye in the fovea and dominate day vision and detect color.  The rods dictate night vision and are sensitive to the intensity of light.  Rods dominate peripheral vision and are the cause of why we can see a star in our periphery but when we look straight at the star the light disappears.  I 

believe that this is similar to Pale Fire. 

The reader cannot look at Nabokov’s art with a linear daylight “reality” approach of cones but must look to our peripheral night vision.  By analyzing Pale Fire in this manner we find the beauty beside the point- the details that encompass Nabokov’s “trompe l’oeil” in “mything the point.”   I believe Michael, Jenny, Madeline, Bizz, Madeline, and Ashley all did a fantastic job of finding the details behind the text; the chess game, Shakespeare, mirrors and synesthesia, the myths of Icarus Daedalus, and Demeter and Persephone.   These jewels in the text and texture are all fantastic.  All of it relates and open up countless varying galaxies of stars in the Pale Fire universe.  Nabokov is a genius. 

I could go on forever but I think Ill stop my rant here for now.  I would like to end this reflection with a quote by Nabokov from his Lectures on Literature:

We could bring in a number of other beings: a blind man with a dog, a hunter with a dog, a dog with his man, a painter cruising in quest of a sunset, a girl out of gas—  In every case it would be a world completely different from the rest since the most objective words tree, road, flower, sky, barn, thumb, rain have, in each, totally different subjective connotations.  Indeed, this subjective life is so strong that it makes an empty and broken shell of the so-called objective existence.  The only way back to objective reality is the following one: we can take these several individual worlds, mix them thoroughly together, scoop up a drop of that mixture, and call it objective reality.  We may taste in it a particle of madness if a lunatic passed through that locality, or a particle of complete and beautiful nonsense if a man has been looking at a lovely field and imagining upon it a lovely factory producing buttons or bombs; but on the whole these mad particles would be diluted in the drop of objective reality that we hold up to the light in our test tube.  Moreover, this objective reality will contain something that transcends optical illusions and laboratory tests.  It will have elements of poetry, of lofty emotion, of energy and endeavor (and even here the button king may find his rightful place), of pity, pride, passion—and the craving for a thick steak at the recommended roadside eating place.

I think Nabokov’s words on human perception speak better than my own…..