Набоковская Европа. Литературный альманах. Ежегодное издание. Том 2

«Everyone who has dealings with such cases knows how perilous an inflation can be. No more than a flight of steps or a smooth floor is needed to precipitate a fatal fall.»[146]

«It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course – for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon which in the end will completely envelop him»[147]

John Shade, as a poet, professor and spiritual seeker evinces the qualities of the higher man. Jung called this archetype the «Wise Old Man».

«The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any person possessing authority.»[148]

Wise Old Man is allied to the positive anima as a spiritual guide and is therefore often seen with a young girl. This may explain in part the relation of John and Hazel Shade.

The «triple» theme is can be found in the major structures of Pale Fire. The aforementioned alchemist, Michael Meiers’ unique structure of his book, Atalanta Fugiens, is referenced covertly in Pale Fire. It is an alchemical treatise of 50 discourses presented as fugues for three voices. It combined poetry, music and engraved illustrations, like the one above, called «emblemata». There is then commentary on each poem. Like other alchemists of the time, Meiers occasionally uses «argot», mystifying through anagrams and word play. The myth of Atalanta is at the core of alchemy, and I maintain at the core of Pale Fire, as well. Kinbote, in the foreword hints at this:

«I am witnessing a unique physiological phenomenon: John Shade perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, recombining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of verse».

You might say that the structure of Pale Fire is like a fuge; all three characters are contrapuntally singing the same song. The theme of the song is «Individuation». All three are striving realize themselves. Gradus, as Shadow is on a mission to come to consciousness via revolution. Kinbote is on a mission to BE someone, to be recognized, to tell his story. John Shade is on a mission to understand the «Beyond», the metaphysical facts of Life.

The triple motif is suggested in title, Pale Fire, is taken from these lines in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens:

The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves

The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,

That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n
From gen’ral excrement; each thing’s a thief.[149]

Note that Sun, Moon, sea and earth have a circular relationship. They are, then, in a sense, united. A recurring theme of this relationship will be found throughout the text.