English 021 Creative Reading

Weblog - Category - 3 Nabokov
Fourth blog assignment
3 Nabokov
by mphillip

Due before class on Thursday, 2/24 Comment on one of the 3 Nabokov entries. Make sure your comment is pithy and carefully written: organized, anchored by details from Pale Fire, thoughtfully engaged with the entry it's commenting upon. Your comment might raise an objection, or it might bolster the entry's...
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February 22, 2005, 05:14 PM
United in Color
3 Nabokov
by jsimpson

While it seems as though Kinbote’s commentary fails to establish any correlation between it and Shade’s poem, in all actuality there are connections that can be made. An abundant use of colors in the imagery by Kinbote in “the turquoise dome of the Observatory, wisps and pale plumes of cirrus”...
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February 17, 2005, 02:50 PM
Insert witty palindrome here
3 Nabokov
by jhoffman

Kinbote's preoccupation with symetry of order and form seems a mere footnote in his psychological profile - it certainly pales in comparison to his gener issues, his delusions of grandeur, and his near-schizophrenic separation from reality. Yet it is significant in that Shade, and perhaps Nabokov, seem to share this...
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February 17, 2005, 02:48 PM
freedom
3 Nabokov
by bellwang

Although John Shade’s poem and Charles Kinbote’s commentary are frequently unrelated because each person speaks respectively about himself, they both experience a common fear. Shade feels “artistically caged” (l.104) by literature and questions his freedom (l. 102). Shade “loved the taste” (l.103) evoked from his harmonious unity with nature...
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February 17, 2005, 02:47 PM
Escaping or Just Passing Time?
3 Nabokov
by kparker

One thing that both the poem “Pale Fire” and the commentary have in common is that they both include reminiscences about toys. Shade’s reminiscences of his toys are one way that he is able to escape the mundane nature of his life. When imprisoned, the ex-King also recalls a toy...
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February 17, 2005, 02:39 PM
Kinda sad
3 Nabokov
by jmurray

Kinbote’s disconnected and deluded commentary ignores much of Shade’s autobiographical poem and instead becomes a poetical description of Kinbote’s own life and his quizzical relationship with Shade. While they may appear disparate, past tragedy is a common factor in the lives of these “two men, different in origin, upbringing,...
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February 17, 2005, 02:21 PM
Mirror Oposites
3 Nabokov
by kanders2

Although the only apparent link between the writer of Pale Fire, the poem, and its commentator is the commentator’s word that there is one, the reader sees through the image of glass and sight that the poet and the commentator connect by reflecting each other. Shade is an artist looking...
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February 17, 2005, 02:16 PM
identity crisis
3 Nabokov
by lcolon

Though Pale Fire is seemingly dominated by erratic tangents, there seems to be a link between Shade, the author, and Kimbote, the strangely divergent commentator. Both poet and commentator assume roles outside themselves within the text. Kimbote most obviously displays these dual roles with his story of Zembla and the...
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February 17, 2005, 02:12 PM
Apocalyptic Motif Throughout Pale Fire
3 Nabokov
by began

Although there seems to be an intentional gap between John Shade’s poem and Charles Kinbote’s commentary, Vladimir Nabokov repeatedly hints at an apocalyptic motif in relation to death, found in both “Canto 1” as well as Kinbote’s foreword and footnotes. Shade explains to his reader at the outset of the...
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February 17, 2005, 02:11 PM
The Effect of Inspiration
3 Nabokov
by rmccally

Both Kinbote’s commentary and Shade’s poem “Pale Fire” share a common symbol of mirrors and reflections. The symbol appears in the first few lines of Shade’s poem: “I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a...
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February 17, 2005, 02:05 PM
Iris and underlying connections
3 Nabokov
by pdecoste

Kinbote, in Pale Fire, does not ignore John Shade’s poem, but in fact echoes Shade’s symbols and shares his ideas in order to promote his own selfish reading of the poem. By claiming all rights to Shade’s actual text of Pale Fire, Kinbote feels he holds authority over the...
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February 17, 2005, 02:01 PM
A Hidden Contest
3 Nabokov
by oradwan

John Shade is a very open author. He makes no apologies for himself at all, even when he discusses some aspects of his personality that some might consider negative. In his autobiographical canto 1, he states, “Asthmatic, lame and fat, / I never bounded a ball or swung a bat”...
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February 17, 2005, 01:23 PM
Free to think, bound to serve?
3 Nabokov
by kmcqueen

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Charles Kinbot’s commentary contrasts the work and meaning of John Shade. Kinbot continually side tracks from Shade’s poem creating an uncertainty surrounding his motives. From this, it is apparent that Kinbot interprets Shade’s work in a way that justifies the use of his unusual tangents...
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February 17, 2005, 12:45 PM
Kimbote's use of the poem to discuss Zembla
3 Nabokov
by sstewar2

Kimbote uses Shade’s poem to inform the reader about the story of the land of Zembla, which he feels is important. Most of the commentary focuses on the life of Kimbote and Zembla even though he makes small references to Shade. In the beginning of the commentary, focusing on...
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February 17, 2005, 05:33 AM
i'm totally going to regret this later
3 Nabokov
by jsese

Excuse my contemporary, pop culture spin (because I hate pop culture), but you know when The pretty latches onto the plain? More often than not, there is one way to explain This phenomenon aforementioned. Charles Kinbote is very fond Of rattling for pages, on and on About his country and...
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February 17, 2005, 03:12 AM
Treacherous Literature
3 Nabokov
by acathcar

Invented words, nonexistent references and general confusion abound in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Although these are all traits of the extensive commentary by the unreliable and possibly mad Charles Kinbote, a second glance at “Canto One” indicates that John Shade is just as guilty of misrepresentation and incorrect interpretations. Kinbote...
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February 17, 2005, 01:42 AM
Encaged
3 Nabokov
by aahearn

Despite the seeming disconnection between Shade’s poem and Kinbote’s commentary, Nabokov has actually created “Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense,” forging “some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind/ Of correlated pattern” (63) between the poem and the notes. One such point of congruence is that both poet and commentator...
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February 16, 2005, 09:35 PM
Third blog assignment
3 Nabokov
by mphillip

You saw this one coming a mile away: Kinbote’s commentary seems to actually ignore most of Shade’s poem. But can you identify a particularly interesting and specific point of congruence? This could be an echoed phrase, a shared image, a similar obsession.... How might this congruence revise our understanding of...
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February 15, 2005, 02:05 PM