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)
No comments:
Post a Comment