NABOKOV Vladimir - Pale Fire

The Message Man, the owlish Nincompoop
And all the Social Novels of our age
Leave but a pinch of coal dust on the page.
Line 929: Freud
In my mind's eye I see again the poet literally collapsing on his lawn, beating the
grass with his fist, and shaking and howling with laughter, and myself, Dr. Kinbote, a
torrent of tears streaming down my beard, as I try to read coherently certain tidbits
from a book I had filched from a classroom: a learned work on psychoanalysis, used
in American colleges, repeat, used in American colleges. Alas, I find only two items
preserved in my notebook:
By picking the nose in spite of all commands to the contrary, or when a youth is all
the time sticking his finger through his buttonhole... the analytic teacher knows that
the appetite of the lustful one knows no limit in his phantasies.
(Quoted by Prof. C. from Dr. Oskar Pfister, The Psychoanalytical Method, 1917, N.Y.,
p. 79)
The little cap of red velvet in the German version of Little Red Riding Hood is a
symbol of menstruation.
(Quoted by Prof. C. from Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 1951, N.Y., p. 240.)
Do those clowns really believe what they teach?
Line 934: big trucks
I must say I do not remember hearing very often "big trucks" passing in our vicinity.
Loud cars, yes - but not trucks.
Line 937: Old Zembla
I am a weary and sad commentator today.
Parallel to the left-hand side of this card (his seventy-sixth) the poet has written, on
the eve of his death, a line (from Pope's Second Epistle of the Essay on Man) that he
may have intended to cite in a footnote:
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where
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