The Denial of Death: Pale Fire and the Immortal Narrator

The Shady Narrator

Since the 1962 publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Pale Fire, literary scholars have debated the novel’s central mystery: who is the real narrator of its story? That so much confusion should surround so basic an element of fiction may appear odd, but Pale Fire’s tricky format, modeled after a traditional literary critique of poetry, makes such ambiguity possible. On the surface, the novel is composed of a fictional commentator, Charles Kinbote, analyzing the last poem of deceased (fictional) writer John Shade. However, strong thematic connections between the two writers, intertwined throughout the text, suggests that the two minds may actually be one, a vital clue that could uncover the hidden identity of the novel’s narrator. As noted by many critics, Nabokov gives readers plenty of evidence to suggest that they should take nothing in the book for granted.

In 1962, Mary McCarthy published a review of Pale Fire in the New Republic that theorized that “Kinbote” was actually a mad Russian professor named Botkin, and that his entire Zembla tale had been a dramatization of the events on his college campus (for example, there is persuasive evidence that the Shadows conspiring to assassinate Charles [Kinbote] correspond suspiciously well to the professors that Kinbote expressly disliked).[1] McCarthy’s interpretation of the novel was influential, and many accepted her explanation of Kinbote’s true identity.

Brian Boyd, writing decades later in Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, endorses McCarthy’s conclusions about the true nature of Kinbote and Zembla, and even provides additional evidence that Kinbote is indeed an insane Russian professor named Botkin.[2] However, Boyd does not believe that such a reading provides a solution to the question of the true narrator’s identity, as it does not explain the numerous connections between the poem and its commentary despite their different authors. Pale Fire, Boyd suggests, “provokes us into explaining the strange resonances between two minds and worlds that seem as remote from one another as Shade’s and Kinbote’s.” Boyd argues that the novel’s central conceit of two separate stories told by two totally discordant narrators is but a surface illusion, concealing the deep thematic continuity that ties Shade’s poem and Kinbote’s Commentary together. And indeed, Boyd points to subtle connections between the two that cement his point: the uncanny “presence of Shakespeare” in both, from serving as inspiration for the title “Pale Fire” to Kinbote’s Zemblan copy of one of his plays, the “imagery of reflection” in the poem’s opening lines and Zembla as a “land of mirrors,” and the fact that Shade, Kinbote, and the assassin Gradus all have the same birthday, to name a few. Boyd demonstrates, through detailed analysis, how Kinbote could not have been responsible for all of these odd “resonances” that point to a single “consciousness” underpinning the entire novel.[3]

Boyd’s own solution to the narrator problem takes the form of a ghostly tale. He claims that the spirit of Shade’s dead daughter Hazel inspires her father to compose Pale Fire the poem. Shade, after his death, similarly affects Kinbote, influencing the madman’s “paranoia in such a way that his developing fantasy about Jack Grey takes shape as the Gradus story, which is then through Shade's unrecognized guidance shaped into a complex narrative counterpoint to the composition of the poem.”[4] Thus, Pale Fire the novel can have two different narrators while still maintaining its thematic continuity.

On the one hand, Boyd’s reading, while intriguing, is somewhat convoluted and rather esoteric, relying on subtle clues that range from the obscure to the contrived. On the other hand, McCarthy’s solution to the narrator problem is inadequate in light of Boyd’s convincing case that a single mind underpins the novel. Indeed, that observation may be Boyd’s most important contribution to the debate. Ultimately, though, McCarthy’s and Boyd’s readings are disqualified by a single passage in the novel. The passage, whose importance was first noted by William Dowling in 2003[5], comes in page 275. Gradus is reading through the day’s edition of the New York Times. After a lengthy passage that describes in exact detail what Gradus read about, the following line appears: “I confess it has been a wonderful game--this looking up in the WUL of various ephemerides over the shadow of a padded shoulder.”

This single line, inserted innocuously at the end of a long and rambling paragraph, casually confirms that neither Shade nor Kinbote are the true authors of the text. Shade is dead, and so couldn’t have done research even if he’d wanted to. Kinbote would never find himself in a library, as he repeatedly informs the reader that he does not have access to books, let alone a library. He makes clear that he is in a “bookless mountain cave” as he writes the Commentary.[6] His Index entry confirms his isolation from research material twice over, making special note of “his having no library in his Timonian cave” as well as "his not being able, owing to some psychological block or the fear of a second G, of traveling to a city only sixty or seventy miles distant, where he would certainly have found a good library."[7] The impossibility of Kinbote going to the library is a point made so conspicuously that it feels as if someone besides him is deliberately drawing attention to it. Whoever is speaking in the above line, which appears in the Commentary written by Kinbote, cannot be Kinbote. In other words, not only is Kinbote’s tale of a magical Zembla fictional, he himself appears to be a fictional character within the novel’s universe. This discovery holds enormous implications not just for his commentary, but for the poem he is commenting on. If Kinbote isn’t real, then are any elements of his story, including his relationship with John Shade, the sequence of events that landed Pale Fire’s manuscript in his lap, and John Shade himself, real as well? The significance of this one sentence is such that it potentially discounts most of Pale Fire as imaginary within the book’s own universe, while also hinting at the shadowy narrator that stands behind it all, skillfully disguised as the distinct voices of Shade and Kinbote.

The presence of a mysterious narrator becomes more apparent towards the conclusion of the Commentary, when the carefully constructed illusion of Kinbote begins to break down. The first major suggestive clue comes in the inconsistency of Kinbote’s voice. On page 300, he slips into an unfamiliar tone at odds with his syntax up to that point: “Well folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here. Yes, better stop.”[8] Either Kinbote has gone mad (unlikely, because he already is), or someone other than him is speaking. Aside from the abrupt change in diction, the statement is also suspicious in light of Kinbote’s supposed location. As noted earlier, Kinbote, while writing the Commentary, is isolated in the mountains. In contrast to that image, the above speaker seems to be in “a fine hall” with “many” people. His presence in a place with multiple occupants would make sense if he was, say, in a university, a notion supported by the one other time that the unknown narrator has shown himself so far: conducting research in the library of Wordsmith University. The above babbling about a “fine hall” is the second major time that a narrator besides Shade or Kinbote reveals himself. Unlike the first instance, though, where the narrator unveiled himself while still speaking in Kinbote’s voice, here the narrator slips into what seems to be his actual manner of speech.

The oddities don’t stop there, though. At one point in the Commentary, “Kinbote” suggests that he will “pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics” by “cook[ing] up a stage play, an old-fashioned Melodrama with three principals: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments.” The meta-commentary here is probably the most blatant in the entire novel, as the speaker condenses the whole plot of Pale Fire into a few lines, while simultaneously dismissing it as an imaginary story. Kinbote’s blunt insinuation that his elaborate tale, which he believes with utter conviction, is not only false but also one that “pander[s] to simple tastes” and is “an old-fashioned melodrama” is at odds with every opinion he has expressed and every action he has taken over the course of the novel. After all, he stole Shade’s poem and wrote a rambling 200-page commentary for the sole purpose of enlightening the world with the glory of Zembla. Considering Kinbote’s reverence for the epic he has concocted, he would be unlikely to mock it even as a joke, and even less likely to do so without the barest hint of self-awareness. Since Kinbote’s perpetual lunacy is the cause of his Zembla delusion in the first place, his out-of-character behavior cannot be attributed to insanity. In other words, Kinbote is not the speaker here. More likely, our mysterious narrator has hijacked his character’s voice once again to ironically comment on the story he has written. Here, near the end of the novel, is where the narrator appears most clearly.

So, the narrator appears to be an author of sorts. Who is it? “Kinbote’s” following statements suggest an obvious conclusion: “I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art." Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Vladimir Nabokov’s biography will recognize the obvious parallels to it in this passage. Nabokov was indeed a heterosexual Russian writer who was exiled from his country, and he did turn up at not at one, but several college campuses, as a professor.[9] The reference here is too specific to be a coincidence. One could argue that here the novel’s narrator reveals himself to be no other than Vladimir Nabokov, in which case he is Pale Fire’s author not just in the real world, but within the novel’s own universe as well.

But there is reason to suspect that such a hypothesis is erroneous. Nabokov, at the time that Pale Fire was written, was not “sans audience”; in fact, he was quite well known. His fame was not all positive, since much of it came from the mixed reception to the controversial Lolita, but it was fame nonetheless.[10] More so, there was nothing preventing Nabokov from having a future as a writer, which he did with the publication of Pale Fire. So, while there are enough similarities between “Kinbote’s” oddly specific description and Nabokov to immediately bring the Russian author to mind, there are also enough differences to suggest the above reference is just a witty if self-indulgent move on Nabokov’s part, without any deeper implications. The line teeters on the edge of both significance and insignificance, and so cannot function as conclusive evidence either way. Of course, the above reasoning alone does not disqualify Nabokov from being the true identity of the narrator.

What does, though, is the passage that first revealed the mysterious narrator’s presence, where he conducts research at the WUL (Wordsmith University Library). While the New York Times article mentioned in the scene corresponds almost exactly to the actual one published that day in real life, it contains a few a crucial differences, the most notable of which is the insertion of Zembla, a fictional country. More importantly, whoever is sifting through the New York Times archives is doing so at a fictional university. This person cannot literally be Nabokov the real-life author talking about research. The unknown narrator, by reading a fictional article at a fictional university, reveals himself to be a fictional character as well. In other words, the narrator is an actual character in Pale Fire, and most of the novel is an imaginary tale that he himself concocted. Pale Fire, then, becomes a dizzyingly multi-layered novel in which Nabokov writes about an author writing about a commentator writing about a poet. The existence of a single narrator outside of Shade and Kinbote nicely explains the “resonances” noted by Boyd without resorting to overly complicated theories.

Understanding the narrator as a fictional character within Pale Fire lends newfound significance to the end of the Commentary, where “Kinbote” declares, ““God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work.” The reference to “characters” calls to mind the speech of an author, in which case the narrator is likely the one speaking here, talking about the fictional narrative and people he’s constructed. Note that he says “other characters” and not just “characters,” a subtle hint that he himself is a character. The “two” he refers to are almost certainly Shade and Kinbote, who are the major focuses of Pale Fire. But what is the “example” they set that he seeks to avoid? The following lines answer that question: "I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.”[11] The narrator desires to continue existing, to continue living. He wishes to avoid death, in which case he would indeed not want to end up like Shade, who is dead, or Kinbote, whom Boyd argues, based on solid evidence, likely kills himself after the Commentary is complete. The narrator’s concern with death thematically complements the rest of the novel, which is preoccupied with questions of death and what comes after. But how, exactly, will the narrator “cheat” death?

By never being forgotten. Fictional characters can literally die, as Shade does, but they can metaphorically die as well, by ceasing to remain significant in the memories of the reader or by ceasing to be talked about. In the closing portions of the Commentary, the narrator laments that his “notes and self are petering out,” thus linking the continued existence of his “self” to the existence of words.[12] One can say, then, that the narrator has indeed survived Pale Fire’s end; after all, endless ink, whether McCarthy’s or Boyd’s, has been spilled in the quest to discover his true identity. He has fulfilled his vow, continuing to exist in different “forms” through the various works written solely about him, including this very essay. Since the narrator remains a mysterious figure even by the end of Pale Fire, Nabokov ensures that he will remain a subject of discussion for years to come, immortalized forever in the texts of others.

[1] McCarthy, Mary. "Bolt from the Blue." New Republic. Web. 22 Apr. 2016. .

[2] Boyd, Brian. Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999. Print, p. 90-96

[3] Ibid, p. 107-126

[4] Boyd, Brian. Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999. Print, pg. 211

[5] "Dowling on Pale Fire." Dowling on Pale Fire. Web. 22 Apr. 2016. .

[6] Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Pale Fire: A Novel. Vintage International, 1989. Print, p. 194

[7] Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Pale Fire: A Novel. Vintage International, 1989. Print,, p. 308-309

[8] Ibid, p. 300

[9] "Vladimir Nabokov Biography." Notable Biographies. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.

[10] Ibid

[11] Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Pale Fire: A Novel. Vintage International, 1989. Print, p. 300

[12] Ibid, p. 300