''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

- 249 -
commentary whose mechanics have been analysed.
There is an epigraph to the novel, taken from
Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson:
This reminds me of the ludicrous account
he gave Mr Langton, of the despicable
state of a young gentleman of good family.
"Sir, when I heard of him last, he was
running about town shooting cats. " And
then, in a sort of kindly reverie, he
bethought himself of his own favorite
cat, and said, "But Hodge shan't be shot:
no, no, Hodge shall not be shot. "
Field has two explanations for this. One is that it is
a statement of Shade about Kinbote, who must live to
write the commentary: "... no, no, Kinbote shall not be
shot. " The second explanation refers to "a work that
was to be written by Johnson on the Boswell family
based on papers to be furnished by Boswell. " However,
this plan was given up "in favor of other projects, which
strongly suggests that the epigraph does indeed have
something to say about Pale Fire as a whole. "59 - it
could also simply be read as a statement about Kinbote's
mental state, the person relating what he has heard and
getting caught up in his story in much the same way
as Kinbote in his, and thus foreshadowing Kinbote's tra-
gic failure to distinguish between fiction and life.
The commentator, then, emerges as a person with
a triple identity: V. Botkin; Charles Kinbote; Charles
the Beloved, King of Zembla. Of these three, the
clues in the commentary establish Botkin as the "real"
I-
person, and Botkin, Moynahan says, "reinvents himself
twice. 1160 Moynahan accepts the novel at its face
value as far as the implication is concerned that it
is "really" Shade who has written the poem, and