on Reciting Pale Fire
My path to Pale Fire is an unusual one. My personal agenda has been for some time to explore the use of poetry, especially traditional, metric, poetry, as a basis for a new literacy and pedagogy; one that focuses more on verse than on the novel or short story, and that emphasizes vocal rhetoric as a companion and entry point to written rhetoric. This reflects a desire to adapt to a changing aesthetic world in which the consumption of shorter works more prevalent, and the legacy of traditional verse might seem newly relevant in a era of verse-speech song-forms such as rap, hip-hop, or whatever. These issues are, and have been, slowly developing. Nevertheless these considerations have led me to record myself reciting verse, in general, then mainly traditional metric verse. This has culminated in a minor obsession with Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. I suppose underlying all this, and Chaucer in particular, is an abiding belief in the allure of the strange, and the evocative power of the human voice. Our digital era offers tools that make the apprehension of Chaucer's Middle English considerably easier for, not just students, but everyone. Like exotic foods and arts these more clearly seen discoveries are their own advocacy.
It was at this point that I discovered that one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century had in fact written an extended poem in the same form as Chaucer, namely rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter, our poorly denoted Heroic Couplets. So whatever other merits Pale Fire, the poem and book, may possess what originally motivated me, and still does, is its anachronistic standing in the modern era, and its attempt to demonstrate the relevancy through enchantment of traditional poetic forms.
I made my first acquaintance with Pale Fire in August 2009 but only the poem interested me. I began memorizing the first canto I think even before having read the poem all the way through, which obviously is to say that I read slow, and that I was much impressed with the ambiance of the first canto, and what I took to be the great pathos of canto two. I remember wondering if and how the final two cantos could fulfill the promise, the grandeur, of the first two cantos. And, indeed, I remember being disappointed on first reading the final cantos, and wondering if my efforts at memorization were not sore mistake.
By December I had overcome my apprehensions and had even finished reading Kinbote's Commentary, though I was rather disappointed in them too at first.
I thought Kinbote's escape was labored, other things like the Ducal Chapel incident rather opaque, Kinbote's character, of course, irresistibly engaging, but Gradus' journey rather dull and barely held up by its moments of satire, Disa's role a side-effect of a humorous send-up.
By early 2010 I was making my first takes of Canto Four and so on my way to memorizing the whole thing.
A reciter is forced to make certain interpretive decisions that a mere reader, reciting quietly to himself, may not even consider. In Pale Fire there are four main interpretive issues facing the performer, rhetorical choices that must be made, whether consciously or not.
Some of these considerations are:
The Rendering of the Female Voices,
Shade's State of Mind,
Overall Tone: Irony, Pathos and Humor,
Shade's Character; Consistency of Tone.
Rendering the Female Voices
There are a number of direct quotes in Pale Fire and most of them are female, Sybil, Hazel, and Mrs. Z. Thus the most important decision confronting the reciter of Pale Fire is how to render these voices. Generally speaking the female voice is softer and pitched higher than the male, which we suppose our reciter to be. How well the reciter is able to modulate these vocal qualities to signify and impersonate the female depends of course on experience and practice. The ability to achieve some degree of differentiation is quite desirable. It varies the sound of the piece overall and in a long piece like Pale Fire this is of considerable importance. It also presents the opportunity for humor through vocal inflection as in the case of Mrs. Z. I think the challenge of cross-speaking adds greatly to the fun of the piece and generally ought to be tried.
Of course there's another solution to this problem. Simply engage a second reciter to render the female voices. This is perhaps the best way of proceeding, if possible, in order to get the most polished result. But it should also be noted that there is a challenge implied in a single reciter performance that is doubtless felt, appreciated and admired by a live audience. The daring do, that is perhaps destined to sound contrived and yet gains a degree of humor just from that. Also the single reciter has a greater sense of control, there are no issues of coordination as with between multiple reciters. Thus issues of tempo and dynamics are more easily resolved.
Nabokov at the 92nd Street Y.
Nabokov recited some two hundred lines of Pale Fire at New York's 92nd Street Y, in March(?) 1964. He recited from the line beginning, She might of been you… through to the end of Canto Two, with a few lines omitted. I had hoped to include a link to
I'll have some more general words about the performance later on, for now I've just excerpted a couple lines that demonstrate how he handled, on that occasion, the transistion between voices. I've chosen this since it represents the greatest degree of differentiation between voices that Nabokov achieves and I think you will agree that the amount of differentiation and effeminacy is rather slight. Although Nabokov was a relaxed and effective performer of his works, as shown by the other pieces he performed at this setting, he obviously does not attempt to impersonate the female voice to any great extent. Presumably this was something that was not worth the effort to him.
Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned
Into a wood duck. And again your voice:
“But this is prejudice! You should rejoice
That she is innocent.
[Nabokov reading]
Interpreting Shade's State of Mind
The first choice is basically semantic though, namely: Is Shade becoming unhinged through-out Canto Four? This obviously affects deeply how the lines of that canto are rendered, what emotion and mental state is being depicted. Most readers probably don't read it this way, as seeing Shade as going nuts.
Indeed Kinbote commentary to the first line of Canto Four, notes a discrepancy between the opening quatrain and the rest of the canto:
Actually, the promise made in these four lines will not be really kept except for the repetition of their incantatory rhythm in lines 915 and 923-924 (leading to the savage attack in 925-930). The poet like a fiery rooster seems to flap his wings in a preparatory burst of would-be inspiration, but the sun does not rise. Instead of the wild poetry promised here, we get a jest or two, a bit of satire, and at the end of the canto, a wonderful radiance of tenderness and repose.
Thus Kinbote's words seem echoed when
R S Gwynn says: I can't see Shade's lines as much more than amusingly whimsical…
But there are reasons for rendering Shade as mad.
First off one notes that Kinbote also recognizes an extreme emotionalism, the overwrought, savage attack in lines 925-930, Shade's Litany of Loathes.
Here are lines 923 — 930:
Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,
Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.
[My rendition.]
Shade's disdain, rage, is focused on things that seem random, unrelated to the ongoing narrative, and inconsequential.
One, the contour of the overall piece demands a dramatic, emotional, ending.
Two, Shade's train-of-thought is disjointed during the last canto, and his metaphors are more difficult to decipher.
The prosody of the critical passages support an explosive vocal rendering.
My point is not to persuade the reader here on interpretation but meerly to note the issue, and once understood, its great significance to any performance of Pale Fire, the poem.
Irony: Pathos and Humor(mainly Bathos)
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff
Publisher:Random House,
c1999.
With the unfinished poem in the house, Rolf felt awed, as if in the presence of a newborn babe. (She was not far off: Vera had begun to refer to those lines as the book's soul.) Toward the end of the first week, after teas, dinners, movies, after Vera shared her scrapbooks and spoken candidly about their finances, Vladimir wondered if Rolf would like him to read from the work. He had been complaining that he was trying to make the thing obscure, a difficult task as he was by nature so emminently lucid. Vera and Rolf sat together on the couch as Vladimir, from his armchair, recited the first two cantos of Pale Fire, his voice swelling "like a happy church organ." Was it moving? he asked when he had finished? It was very much meant to be. The three were nearly drunk on his poetry; Vera's face was wet afterward, glistening with sweat and tears. Out onto the street they spilled after discussing the work, Rolf singing, Vladimir shouting, "What a delightful evening, What a perfectly wonderful evening!"
pp 277-8
The third issue concerns Shade himself, and his voice overall throughout the poem. The struggle between irony and pathos that runs throughout the poem, obviously runs through Shade. Where are the moments of high irony and distancing, (and dissociating)?
The school pantomime is deliberately exaggerated, overwritten, in order to provide a self-conscious awareness on the part of the reader not to take things too seriously.
There is more scorn than outrage pronounced at the words Mother Time.
the unlikeliness of any teacher of young children, especially in an upscale, collegiate setting, casting a child in a play according to her plainness. Indeed I think finding such a role in the literature, other than The Ugly Duckling, which I doubt is ever acted out. So the intended irony ought to be obvious. But because it is verse some naive readers may overlook the intended irony.
It is instrucive to listen to VN read the passage noting the fact that his reading elicits laughter at the end of the stanza.
Especially note to VN's scornful reading[inflection] of the words:
Mother Time
I[t] was no use, no use. The prizes won
In French and history, no doubt, were fun;
At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,
And one shy little guest might be left out;
But let’s be fair: while children of her age
Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage
That she’d helped paint for the school pantomime,
My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,
A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,
And like a fool I sobbed in the men’s room.
[Nabokov reading]
There are a number of words and phrases that can be said to be bathetic, deflating pathos, and therefore unforgivably out of character for a grieving father, which brings up the question of Shade's self-awareness of the irony in his verse. Indeed my own feeling is that one should not inquire to deeply into Shade's awareness of his irony. Everybody jokes about death, gallow's humor, but it is unconscionable to go on for as long as Shade does deriding his daughter's appearance and her reactions to it. Shade is thus to be understood as an ironic actor saying lines that compress humor and sadness into a little space, that borrows from real life tragedies, but are not the plausible expressions of an actual father.
made her almost fetching, and the mirrors smiled,
the light were merciful, the shadows mild...
Indeed this is the central dilemma in the poem and in its rendering, the continuous modulation of empathy versus irony. Sybil's discounting the value of beauty. Virgins have written some resplendent books! Out of the lacquered night a white-scarffed beau, would never come for her, she'd never go, A dream of gauze and jasmine to that dance. We sent her though to a Chateau in France. The word lacquered signifies a confected setting, The antiquated word, beau, the cliché-sounding dream of gauze and jasmine, and even the extra, internal rhyme, though/Chateau, combine to affect a fairy tale scene. Then the dry, physically and emotionally distancing, stinging, bathetic, line that deflate whatever sympathy for Hazel might still remain after her fairytale framing. We sent her though to a Chateau in France. Jack Parr. In my opinion this is one of the great passages for its mixture of pathos and dark humor. Can one recite this without ironic inflation and timing? Consistency, that hobgoblin... Should one try to maintain a consistent spirit of Shade throughout the poem? Is he mostly sad and bitingly ironic, or richly ironic through which a sad tale, despite all depredations, maintains some lasting poignancy? Should the reciter try to draw tears? audiobookstand, Works by Nabokov
Exaggeration: Irony and Pathos
Much of art is an exaggeration of life. Verse itself is often referred to as heightened speech. I have been surprized at recordings of things which I felt were emotional and empathetic seem to come off as dry and perfunctory. One sees this on the nightly news where everything is emphasized and
Exaggeration is the performer's little helper in trying to render Nabokov's undulations of pathos, irony and humor, for exaggeration is used to depict sorrow, while over-exaggeration vocally evokes irony by calling attention to the words as words. This as we noted before for in the way Nabokov recites the words Mother Time.
Pale Fire is often over-the-top in what it says and how it says it. The careful modulation of volume, attack, emphasis should be seen as a way of depicting both pathos and irony, even simultaneously in the sense of pathos heard by the naive listener and the strains of bathos understood by the more learned ear.
Character: Consistency and Drama
Pale Fire also has ongoing interpretation issues. Namely whether to work at developing a voice that seems representative of Shade, or simply going with the episodic flow of the poem in order to achieve the most dramatic and rhythmic effect.
How should Shade sound?
From his poem and Kinbote's notes one pictures a gruff, witting, but physically unsteady sixty-one year old, which would seem to call for a voice that is, in general, pitched low, and speaks somewhat slowly, perhaps even distractedly, that lacks vigor and affective buoyancy.
Trying to depict Shade's lack of vigor presents a problem in places where great emotion or excitement are called-for. The performer may be heard to be coming out of character.
Responding to some thoughts from Matt Roth I tried making Shade a tad slower, more distinctly aged, as I could. I liked it at first but now feel the retardation is a distraction. I'm not sure there is any good resolution between the depiction of Shade as being at least somewhat infirm, or shaky, and the flow and speed required to maintain the listener's interest.
Pale Fire also has ongoing interpretation issues.
Namely whether to work at developing a voice that seems representative of Shade, or simply going with the episodic flow of the poem in order to achieve the most dramatic and rhythmic effect. Responding to some thoughts from Matt Roth I tried making Shade a tad slower, more distinctly aged, as I could. I liked it at first but now feel the retardation is a distraction. I'm not sure there is any good resolution between the depiction of Shade as being at least somewhat infirm, or shaky, and the flow and speed required to maintain the listener's interest.
Conclusions
the importance of exaggeration
hearing Pale Fire as a dramatic tour of emotion, a tour de force of pathos, humor, wonder, satire, rage and madness, ending in serenity.
The most important question for me is whether Pale Fire is in fact good enough, enjoyable or lovable enough, to serve as a major part of a foundation for the revival of traditional verse and its objectives. I like to believe that it is, but the truth of the matter is that this is one of those questions that possess only an existential answer. The theory is all well and good and necessary even, but the proof is, as the saw says, in the pudding. I'd like to believe in Pale Fire as more than an anachronism which it is but also as one example of what traditional verse can still be, and become. But this, tied only to one heart, has only theoretical truth in a world of speculation.
Pale Fire can be an modern entry point the heroic couplet and iambic pentameter as in Frost and Browning, Chaucer and Shakespeare, and yes, even that toiler, T. S. Eliot, but perhaps more importantly it can serve as an elixir that revitalizes an old practice and art; but for this to occur it must be more than just read but read allowed and enjoyed in groups by audiences gliding over a sonic range of colors and emotions greater than their own imaginings; and that end in the obligatory sunset perhaps, but one that also contains some arresting, haunting, particularities, some symbols of fragil beauty and transient indifference: a butterfly, and some neighbor's gardener trundling-by.
—October 2010