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

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"really" Kinbote who has written the commentary and
the rest of the critical apparatus, in other words,
that they are "really" separate individuals. Both
Field and Stegner have come to a different conclusion.
There are no two authors, they both decide; there
is only one primary author and he invents the
other and his work. They differ in their choice,
though. For Stegner, the primary author is Kinbote,
for Field, it is Shade.
Stegner points out the close connection that
exists, after all, between poem and commentary and
which proves how well Kinbote has understood the
poem, and he has another argument: He pleads that
If [Kinbote] is able to dream up an
Arabian Nights tale of his royal life
in Onhava and populate that capital
city with several dozen fantastic,
though imaginary, personalities, he
is certainly able to dream up John and
Sybil Shade and their daughter Hazel,
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and create a fictitious poem as well.
He supports his theory by showing how, all the dif-
ferent meanings of 'Shade' taken into account (com-
parative-darkness, shadows, spirit or ghost
[in
Shakespeare], degree), and the implications of
'Gradus' also taken into account ("'Gradus' means
'degree' in Russian, one of his aliases is Degree,
and another, Grey, suggests a predominant colour of
shade"), "Shade blends into Grey-Degree-Gradus. " And,
Stegner, concludes, "a Gradus is also a dictionary
used to aid the writing of poetry. "62
Field, too, sees unifying bonds between poem and
commentary, which make him decide for one primary