Nabokov, Vladimir - Brian Boyd (essay date 1997)

Brian Boyd (essay date 1997)

SOURCE: “Shade and Shape in Pale Fire,” in Nabokov Studies, Vol. 4, 1997, pp. 173-224.

[In the following essay, Boyd pursues the problem of internal authorship in Pale Fire.]

… which, I hope, sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its spirit

—Pale Fire, Note to Lines 39-40

For those who have been following the story so far: this will not lead where you expect.

SETTING OUT THE PROBLEM

The longest-running and the fiercest disagreement in the interpretation of any of Nabokov's works has been over the internal authorship of Pale Fire.1 Nabokov wrote the novel in 1960-1961, and published it in 1962, but Charles Kinbote signs the Foreword on October 19, 1959, after having also written the Commentary to John Shade's 999-line poem, “Pale Fire,” which he reports...

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