"Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov:
The Magic of Artistic Discovery "- the opening of Brian Boyd

ST. PETERSBURG. Ivan Limbach Publishing House uncovers the mysteries of the Pale Fire novel with Brian Boyd. A study by a professor at Auckland University dedicated to the most unusual work of Vladimir Nabokov.

Brian Boyd has been exploring the work of a Russian writer for over 40 years. In his essay, The Life of a Biographer, Boyd wittily remarked that Nabokov himself chose it while still at university. Starting with the usual coursework, he continues to write about Nabokov, who continues to “set” new interesting tasks for him. The previous books devoted to the Russian and American periods of the writer’s life, the audience received more than favorably. The story of the life of Nabokov in the presentation of Boyd is recognized as the standard version of the biography of Vladimir Vladimirovich. Already in the preparation of his dissertation, he was faced with a lot of inconsistencies and mistakes made by Andrew Field in the bibliography of Nabokov. The desire to restore the truth laid the foundation for the search for reliable information in libraries and bookstores. The thesis fell into the hands of Vera Nabokova. As a result, Boyd was invited to catalog the writer’s archive.

Boyd explored a mysterious work resembling an intricate chess game or a fancy puzzle. He fearlessly takes the reader to the very jungle, not promising easy ways, but making sure that the journey will turn out to be fascinating. To get acquainted with the novel itself and the poem inside it, translations of Vera Nabokova and Alexander Sharymova are preferable.

“Pale Fire” or “the devil from the snuff box” (as Mary McCarthy put it figuratively) consists of a 999-line poem by the fictional writer John Francis Shade and lengthy comments by a certain Charles Kinbota, his colleague. The latter identifies what Shade wrote with his life. Events in it unfold according to a fantastic scenario, born in his crazy head. The output is a vivid parody of illiterate translations, because of which it is not possible to understand the meaning of the original. One of the reasons that led the writer to puzzle work is poor-quality, incorrect and simply ridiculous translations of Pushkin’s poetry into English.

According to Boyd, the novel he analyzes is one of Nabokov’s best works, which is fraught with an incredible amount of discoveries. He presents his own insights and clues to the readers.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru