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Nefariously Fun Satire of Literary Criticism, Satyriasis and "Bold Virilia"

Nabokov was such a pure genius in performing brilliant magic with words of the English language, as well as in creating playful and at times side-splitting satire that lacerates the objects of its scorn. In Pale Fire, Nabokov targeted academia of literature and literary criticism and, to a degree, all males' preoccupation with sex .

Nabokov isn't my favorite author by a longshot, but given his masterpieces in Lolita and Pale Fire, I'm not going out on a limb when I say he is probably second on the list of maestros of English linguistics, right behind Shakespeare. I only include the below lengthy quotes because this is the rare occasion in which the use of the language is as important as what is said.

The novel is split into two parts: first is a 999-line poem autobiographical of a fictional John Shade, a professor of lit at a New England college; then comes the commentary--the large majority of the novel--written by a professor named Charles Kinbote in another department of the college but who lives next door to Shade and his wife.

In reading Prof. Kinbote's extensive exegesis on the poem, it becomes readily apparent that something is amiss with him, really amiss. He implies that he is the exiled king of a country called Zembla, specifically that he is �Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla, surnamed The Beloved.� As to his assumed name Kinbote, he derived it from the �king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end.�

Soon you wonder exactly how delusional Kinbote is, given that he believes that Shade's poem brims with references to himself (imaginary as they may seem), transforming through his commentary every few lines of the poem into a frame around himself and his fantasy realm of Zembla.

The novel is also somewhat of a mystery that you must decipher as to who killed John Shade after Kinbote tells us that he is safekeeping the "Pale Fire" poem manuscript and all notecards containing the poem.

Later, the reader learns that "immediately upon John Shade’s demise, [the head of the department] circulated a mimeographed letter that began:

Several members of the Department of English are painfully concerned over the fate of a manuscript poem, or parts of a manuscript poem, left by the late John Shade. The manuscript fell into the hands of a person who not only is unqualified for the job of editing it, belonging as he does to another department, but is known to have a deranged mind. One wonders whether some legal action, etc.�

Yet, long before this, clues abound of Kinbote's psychosis. For example,

“What would I not have given for the poet’s suffering another heart attack (see line 691 and note) leading to my being called over to their house, all windows ablaze, in the middle of the night, in a great warm burst of sympathy, coffee, telephone calls, Zemblan herbal receipts (they work wonders!), and a resurrected Shade weeping in my arms (“There, there, John�).�

[In a conversation with John Shade's wife:] “Speaking of novels,� I said, “you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more,� and,

“In Zembla, where most females are freckled blondes, we have the saying: belwif ivurkumpf wid snew ebanumf, “A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony.�

Additionally, Kinbote has a perverted mind relating to pubescent males, including these Paphian passages in his commentary:

“the little angler, a honey-skinned lad, naked except for a pair of torn dungarees, one trouser leg rolled up, frequently fed with nougat and nuts, but then school started or the weather changed�

“When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace.�

I learned a new word, "virilia." I'll let you look it up...or guess.

Often hilarious asides to the running "commentary" on the poem hit you out of the blue. Such as Kinbote's significant problems in consummating his marriage to Princess Disa.

“He farced himself with aphrodisiacs, but the anterior characters of her unfortunate sex kept fatally putting him off. One night when he tried tiger tea, and hopes rose high, he made the mistake of begging her to comply with an expedient which she made the mistake of denouncing as unnatural and disgusting. Finally he told her that an old riding accident was incapacitating him but that a cruise with his pals and a lot of sea bathing would be sure to restore his strength.�

Also, Kinbote discloses his frequent infidelities, resulting in problems with Princess Disa.

“He ... solemnly [swore] he had given up, or at least would give up, the practices of his youth; but everywhere along the road powerful temptations stood at attention. He succumbed to them from time to time, then every other day, then several times daily—especially during the robust regime of Harfar Baron of Shalksbore, a phenomenally endowed young brute.... Curdy Buff—as Harfar was nicknamed by his admirers—had a huge escort of acrobats and bareback riders, and the whole affair rather got out of hand so that Disa, upon unexpectedly returning from a trip to Sweden, found the Palace transformed into a circus�

A highest recommendation. My apologies for the size of this; I hope it's not too much to take it all in. It was not nearly as hard as I thought. I am just now coming to realize the depth of Nabokov's cunning linguistics. I wish I could hit that, or even near that level.