I may assume other disguises

I woke up this morning with these two lines repeating in my head (clearly, I cannot escape Pale Fire even in my sleeping hours. I’m worried). Except that I was not thinking about them as two separate lines: they were replaying through my thoughts as one continuous line. I will pause here to say that I know little to nothing about poetry or verse form, and so, was separating the first and the second lines as I recited them to myself when clearly there is no punctuation to require my doing so.

Thanks goodness in a state of drowsy dreaming/awakening, I was enlightened.

So instead of reading:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane

I may now read:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane

…

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane

How could I not have recognized this before? I certainly realized that the waxwing was slain by the windowpane (by flying into it, if we are to read this literally), and perhaps attracted by what was seen illuminated in the window. But to highlight the section this way further affirms the connection to Narcissus and the novel’s obsession with sameness, with mirroring, and how desire for/attraction to that sameness ultimately leads to the waxwings death and Kinbote’s suicide.

The waxwing is characterized by its soft, silky plumage delicately accented with red: an exceptionally beautiful specimen. It is appropriate that such a bird (also hailing from northern forests) be slain by the false azure in the windowpane, as Narcissus was by his reflection in the azure of the water. 

(As a quick note, I stumbled upon a blog that said this of the first lines of Shade's poem and of waxwings:  "I may not have picked up on it when I first read Pale Fire as an undergraduate, but these lines now present me with an allegory: even after death, the artist lives on -- achieves a kind of immortality -- within the mirror of art. But this allegorical interpretation can't exhaust the vividness and sensual appeal of the waxwing's markings and the subtle gradations of its colors.")

Narcissus desired himself so greatly that nothing could intercede to alter his inevitable fate.

“Unknowingly he desires himself, and the one who praises is himself praised, and, while he courts, is courted, so that, equally, he inflames and burns.” (poetryintranslation.com)

Transfixed by the image, the false/elusive replication of himself, Narcissus begins to physically waste away, to metamorphose.

“As he sees all this reflected in the dissolving waves, he can bear it no longer, but as yellow wax melts in a light flame, as morning frost thaws in the sun, so he is weakened and melted by love, and worn away little by little by the hidden fire. He no longer retains his colour, the white mingled with red, no longer has life and strength, and that form so pleasing to look at, nor has he that body which Echo loved.” (poetryintranslation.com)

In the commentary to line 1000, Kinbote says: “I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist” (300). Suggesting he may turn up on another campus as a happy, heterosexual male, or write a motion picture, or stage play, or travel back to Zembla, or cower in a madhouse (to summarize and skip important details, of course). “But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out—somebody has already set out” (301). Whatever happens, Kinbote’s life will only rotate a degree, change a shade or a grade from what was laid out in the novel, because he encompasses everything. Sailing back to Zembla or huddling and groaning in a madhouse are both levels of Kinbote’s (and Pale Fire’s) reality(ies).

And when a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus” arrives on the scene—which he is presently doing—Kinbote will merely fall into another dimension of the reality that he has created. We feel that the story continues, because it does. As the last line ties into the first, and the commentary is proceeded by the index, which dumps us back into the commentary, which has us flipping the pages of our book back and forth interminably…our reading of the novel is endless.

Kinbote is reflected on the page as the false azure is reflected in the windowpane, as narcissus is reflected in the water and ultimately in the daffodil, and the author of the poem Pale Fire is reflected as the shadow of the waxwing. 

Brianna's memory house

Homosexuality and the False Azure

 

   On Thursday, Sarah discussed that she was revolving between two different topics explored in her blog for her final paper. The first being homosexuality in Pale Fire and the connections to the myth of Orpheus, as well as to Proust and Socrates; the second, of Echo and Narcissus as the revolving myth around which to interpret the structure of mirrors and reflection in Nabokov’s art.

   As we have come to learn, everything in Pale Fire is relevant to EVERYTHING. It is no an imposition for us to make connections between two entities of a seemingly distant nature (“feigned remoteness”). So how could I be surprised to stumble upon an essay that directly links the myth of Narcissus and narcissism to homosexuality in Kinbote’s character and, more importantly, the art of Nabokov.

   In the chapter ‘Queer, Queer Vladimir’ from his book Reflecting Narcissus: a queer aesthetic, Steven Bruhm relates the desire of sameness to an inherently narcissistic persona. Through the achievement of or engagement in sameness, or homosexuality, one simultaneously relegates oneself to the periphery of acceptable social behavior. The desire for sameness produces an insurmountable difference, as Kinbote constantly experiences.

  

“What we think of as homophobia is often really heterophobia, the fear of difference…For Nabokov, narcissism is as much a national expression of homophobia as it is a sexual psychodynamic” (Sedgwick in Bruhm).

 

   Kinbote’s recollections and commentary on “Shade’s poem” are so narrow and convoluted, we realize, because he is interpreting the world through a narcissistic lens. The lens of the artist.

 

“Narcissism is unhealthy when a person's entire behaviour, be it fair or foul, is geared towards ensuring others meet their needs and justify their belief in their inflated self image. This self image is a "false self" and it can be extremely pleasant, charming and intoxicating covering a multitude of insecurities and bad traits” (echo.me.uk).

   The “false self” or image of Charles the Beloved is constructed as a guise for Kinbote’s insanity (or Botkin’s genius).  Is not every single line of the poem twisted somehow in the commentary to serve some purpose of Kinbote’s? Shade is reflected upon in the poem, but is displaced as the speaker by Kinbote.

“Kinbote uses external objects--other people, Shade's poem--"in the service of the self and of the maintenance of its instinctual investment." Indeed, this instinctual investment is figured in a scene that literally appropriates the Narcissus myth: having escaped revolutionary Zembla, Charles traverses the countryside in a red sweater. His supporters stymie the Shadows by donning red sweaters as well, so that the real king cannot be detected in the context of widespread public masquerade (one thinks here of the King of Norway who, along with his subjects, wore Stars of David to confuse the Nazis). However, there is some suggestion that the villainous Gradus too may be wearing a red sweater, and so the enemy and the hero have become indistinguishable. During the escape, Charles comes to a pond and, looking into it, first sees a "counterfeit king" reflected--who is actually, he then realizes, standing on the ledge above him. This reflection--either enemy or supporter or self--soon gives way to "a genuine reflection, much larger and clearer than the one that had deceived him" (143)” (excerpted from Bruhm).

   That instance is perhaps the most literal allusion to the Narcissus myth, but reflection, in both the literal and suggestive sense, engulfs the novel. As Bruhm points to in another fascinating discovery that I can’t help but share:

“Kinbote "resembles" not only King Charles but also Gradus, the revolutionary murderer with whom he shares a birthday, a homeland, and a physiognomy (all Zemblans look alike). The King's bedroom mirror, the very signifier of his identity, was made by Sudarg of Bokay, "Jacob Gradus" spelled backwards (111). The word "kinbote," we are told, is Zemblan for "regicide" (267). And in a way, Kinbote's distortion of Shade's poem kills the author as Jack Gray kills the man”.

   Of course, reflection is alluded to in the first two haunting lines of the poem:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane

   If we think of shadows as a type of duplication, extension, or reflection of the self (after all, it is literally a projection of oneself), then you can see these two lines as a direct metaphor for a reflection in the water. The azure in the windowpane is analogous to a blue body of water, and it is false because a window reflects like a body of water, yet it is not. It is an illusion. A huge, gaping illusion. And perhaps, the most vulnerable, stripped bare reflection in the entirety of Pale Fire.

After reading Pale Fire, it becomes clear that reflection is not merely an element of the novel…it IS the novel.

   At this point, I can’t help but feel that the entire novel revolves around these two lines. That the entire novel—all the identities of Kinbote, questions of the true author, the circles that we are lead in, and the revelations that everything we are reading are mirrored constructions of some greater truth—are huge arrows pointing to these two lines, as if screaming, “It’s right here, at the very beginning, ALL of it”. After all, does not the entire rest of the novel parody and contradict itself? Constructing a tower of meaning, a labyrinth of infinite rooms, with single simple foundation for it all.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

                                                    By the false azure in the windowpane