‘A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.’
Vladimir Nabokov, ‘Pale Fire’; Canto One, lines 120-125
Nabokov’s Pale Fire is a tour-de-force in postmodernism. It is, in fact a novel, but the main body of the text is written as a nine hundred and ninety-nine line poem, split into four cantos. Canto one deals with death and the supernatural, canto two is about family and suicide, canto three focuses on the afterlife, and canto four deals with daily life, creative processes leading to poetry, and a general desire to understand the universe. The poem is written by the fictional John Shade, and is accompanied by a short foreword and lengthy commentary, written by a similarly fictional character named Charles Kinbote.
There are a variety of interpretations and readings of this book, some of which still remain undiscovered, according to Nabokov. Many readers choose to explore the relationship between the two main characters, Shade and Kinbote, which they argue are allured to by constant cross-references throughout the text. Some claim to believe that Kinbote and Shade exist within one another’s writing, influencing the creativity of each other. Indeed, the title, Pale Fire, has been cited as being pilfered from Shakespeare’s Hamlet when, in Act I, Scene 5, the glow worm remarks how the ‘’gins to pale his uneffectual fire’. This quote is often interpreted as a reference to creativity and imagination, so perhaps supports the hypothesis that Kinbote and Shade are an influence upon each other. However, it is more likely that the title was in-fact taken from a lesser known Shakespeare play, Timon of Athens; ‘The moon’s an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun’ (Act IV, Scene 3). Whatever the true meaning, suffice it to say that this book is so complex, and so bewildering, that it is deemed impossible to be adapted for screen.
That brings me to the end of my history lesson, and to the focus of my own reading, which I am basing on the above quote, taken from canto one. I am, as this is a poetic reading, considering the text as solely a poem and not drawing any conclusions from the foreword or the commentary, as they are not academic; they are merely fictional fabrications, which don’t tend to aid a reading of the poem.
As I pointed out, canto one is all about death, specifically Shade’s early encounters with it. The quote I have selected appears to be a comment on the transience of human life, and its insignificance when compared to the natural world. The first two lines allude to ancient hourglasses, in which ‘fine sand’ would count down a specified time. The shape of an hourglass resembles the symbol for infinity (a number 8 laying on its side), and this, I feel, is no coincidence, since the next lines directly reference the concept of infinity . In fact, if you combine the two uses of the word ‘infinite’, along with the hourglass allegory, you’ll notice the famous ‘power of three’ being utilised. Go back to the hourglass again, and consider the idea that an hourglass measures time infinitely. It will measure out its five minutes worth of sand, and then can be turned to measure it out again. This creates a contrast to human life, which is transient and lacks the ‘second chance’ nature of the hourglass.
The succeeding lines reinforce this idea of infinite nature juxtaposed with finite human life. Nabokov states that stars are ‘Infinite foretime and infinite aftertime’, in other words saying that stars were there before Man, and will still be there after. These images of Man’s insignificance, in relation to the natural world in which we live, certainly unite to create a sense of inferiority; a sense of abandonment inside a rather large abyss. This image is cemented by the final line of the quote, ‘They close like giant wings, and you are dead.’ This line conjures the idea of staring up out of a dark hole towards the stars, and falling away from them until they fade from sight and we cease to matter.
The symbolism of infinity recurs throughout the body of the poem, but another specifically poignant moment occurs in canto three. Nabokov writes ‘And I’ll turn down eternity unless /The melanchololy and the tenderness /Of mortal life; the passion and the pain…(list of every day observations)…this slender rubber band /Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand /Are found in Heaven by the newlydead /Stored in its strongholds through the years’. (lines 524-536) This quote is interesting because it notes, after careful examination, the existence of eternity both on Earth and in the afterlife. The general gist is that the narrator will opt out of eternal peace in Heaven unless all the everyday familiarities he knows and loves are also to be found in Heaven. As such, he is questioning the benefit of living forever in the afterlife when we don’t actually know what the afterlife holds. Now consider the line about the elastic band which ‘always forms…an ampersand.’ An ampersand is the proper name for the symbol used to represent the word ‘and’; it looks like this ‘&’. Notice the similarity between that shape and the shape of the hourglass and, thus, the symbol of infinity. I think that what Nabokov is trying to convey here is the idea that we do not need to be so preoccupied with the afterlife, as it is a concept that we are nowhere near understanding, nor even proving. I believe he is trying to say that all the foretold glory of eternity also exists on Earth, and we should be more concerned with living our tiny, transient existences as best we can, and if the afterlife happens to be even better, then that’s a bonus.
As an extra treat in this instalment, I am now going to compare this quote to another of my favourites
‘Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.’
Edward Thomas, ‘Tall Nettles’; lines 1-4
This poem has always been particularly enchanting to me, and this first stanza deals with the same ideas that I have interpreted in Pale Fire. The tall nettles, taken as a symbol of nature, have overgrown and, thus, hidden the farmyard implements placed at the end of the garden. If we consider the tools as a metaphor for Man, then this stanza serves to, once again, demonstrate the insignificance of humans compared to the natural world. It also seems to give a certain degree of power to nature, as if it is something that we will never subdue. Plants have the ability to regrow if they are trimmed; this is a phenomenon that we, as humans, are only just managing to realise for ourselves, and only with the help of science labs. This idea serves to enforce the idea of human mortality compared to nature.
To conclude, from my own readings of these quotations, I am able to discern, fundamentally, the notion that Man is not as powerful and infallible as we would like to believe. Let me, for a second, point out to you that the oldest tree on this planet is reckoned to be in excess of five thousand years old. Consider the fact that if you were lucky and made it to your hundredth birthday, you still would only have lived on this planet for two percent of the lifetime of that tree. Imagine the environmental, evolutionary and geological changes that that tree has a) witnessed and b) survived through. That fact alone serves to really hammer home the notion of the two poems that human life is incredibly transient, and that we should be far more concerned with experiencing Heaven on Earth than we should with notions of the afterlife. I feel that it is important that people try to experience as many different things as they possibly can, and really seek a sense of enlightenment instead of believing that they will still have an eternity in paradise after they die. As Nabokov questioned, in the quote from canto three, how certain can we really be that all the blessings we know to exist on Earth, also exist beyond the realms of our finite lifespan?