Tempest of Plaudits

  

Scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest by Hogarth; Circa 1735

In her review of Pale Fire, Mary McCarthy discusses Nabokov’s inclusion of references to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, among many of his other plays:

“Prospero of The Tempest pops in and out of the commentary, like a Fata Morgana, to mislead the reader into looking for “pale fire" in Shakespeare's swansong. It is not there, but The Tempest is in Pale Fire: Prospero's emerald isle, called the He of Divels, in the New World, Iris and Juno's peacock, sea caves, the chess game of Ferdinand and Miranda, Prospero's enchantments, his lost kingdom, and Caliban, whom he taught language, that supreme miracle of mirroring.”

While these allusions are sure to enthuse, what is most interesting to me is the idea that The Tempest offers on the relationship between artist and creation and how it is manifested in Pale Fire.  Shakespeare’s play tells the story of a usurped duke, Prospero, who is cast off to an island with his daughter, where he learns magical powers.  With the help of his spirit, he creates a tempest to bring those who did him wrong to the island.  Using his powers to manipulate those wrongdoers on the island, he creates a reality of his own in a distant land.

While The Tempest is a reality within a play, it is further a reality of Shakespeare’s creation.  Pale Fire’s layers are a bit more complex, however.  At first we may assume that the poem is, as stated, from Shade, and the foreword, commentary, and index belong to the mind of Kinbote.  However, the striking resemblances between the two men may lead us to question whether or not Shade is a figment of Kinbote’s imagination.  However, the understanding that Kinbote is really the insane Botkin, makes it seem improbable that he would be capable of writing such a poem, let alone understanding the humor in his misreading of the poem (similar to Brian Boyd’s assertion that it would be impossible to assume that The Tempest is merely Caliban’s dream).  One may conclude then that it is possible that Shade is the master of both poem and commentary; that he actually died before the last page number of the index could be included.  However, this, as Boyd states, becomes troubled too, “because the more we accept Shade as author of both poem and commentary, the less we can be sure that someone who has invented Zembla and his own murder has not already transformed the life he presents in the poem in order to make the poem and commentary fit” (Boyd 454).  Like The Tempest, we can look to the metatheatricallity of Pale Fire and assume the author has something to do with the many layers of mapping both creation and created.

           

Of interest to this idea is the commentary of line 130 (I never bounced a ball or swung a bat…):

On Eyestein’s portrait:

“This device which was apparently meant to enhance the effect of his tactile and tonal values had, however, something ignoble about it and disclosed not only an essential flaw in Eyestein’s talent, but the basic fact that “reality” is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average “reality” perceived by the communal eye.”

            The reality of the painting, like Pale Fire is not that it imitates life, or that we can make sense of the creation, but that the creation itself is a work of art.  Trying to make sense of every layer of reality within Pale Fire in terms of our own reality is impossible, but valuing it for those inexhaustible layers is not.  While the infinite regress may lead us back to Nabokov the creator, we realize his negative capability to loom in every nook of Pale Fire, and yet never be centralized. 

           

This brings me to another passage from the same commentary of 130:

“This grotesque sensation, at this diabolical instant, solved the mystery of the passage even before he wriggled at last through the drapery into the dimly lit, dimly cluttered lumbarkamer which had once been Iris Acht’s dressing room in the Royal Theater…The scarlet-clothed fugitive blinked and made for the hall.  It led to a number of dressing rooms.  Somewhere beyond it a tempest of plaudits grew in volume before petering out.  Other distant sounds marked the beginning of the intermission.  Several costumed performers passed by the King, and in one of them he recognized Odon.”

The King’s second escape from the castle brings him to the Royal Theater, likely a reference to Shakespeare’s Royal Globe Theater.  As nothing is accidental in Nabokov, the “tempest of plaudits” caught my attention in conjunction with the epilogue of The Tempest. 

Prospero:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have’s mine own,

Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell,

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

            Noteworthy is that Kinbote is met by actors and applause upon his exile (though not directed at him) in the home of Shakespeare.  Zembla, like the play performed, is the creation of someone.  However, in order for the reader to get the richness of Pale Fire, he must suspend his disbelief and allow himself to be immersed in the “reality” that the novel presents.  Believing in Zembla may not be necessary, but understanding its existence somewhere, if temporarily, is essential to mapping the infinite regresses in Pale Fire.  Like Prospero (or perhaps Shakespeare?) claims in The Tempest’s epilogue, it is applause that will allow for his freedom.  For the tempest of plaudits is the moment the reader or audience becomes conscious of the allusion necessary for understanding.  Whether or not the pulling of the curtain, as Toto does to the Wizard, complicates or clarifies our understanding of the layers of reality, it is necessary to revealing their existence.  

Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: the American Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1991. Print.