The Self-Annihilating Artists of Pale Fire

Abstract

The self-reflexive quality of Nabokov's Pale Fire, a fictional creation governed by its fictional creator, applies not only to the structure but also to the characters. As a group, they are self-referential, appearing as shadows, twins, and inverted images of one another. Though one may assign a central position to Kinbote as the author or manipulator, the source of his art remains in question. Critical suggestions for tracing the real Kinbote are numerous: Kinbote as a merging of Shade's artistic vision and Gradus' urge toward destruction; Kinbote as Shade's aggrandizer, with Gradus as foreshadowed doom.' In the scholarly scuffle, not enough attention has been paid to a humbler figure, the character of Hazel Shade, the poet's daughter who commits suicide. Hazel functions as an interpretive key, revealing much about Kinbote and his grand extrapolation. In her cameo role, she represents the book's confabulation in miniature, the mixed success of art and annihilation.

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