Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 82

19, and as already noted, the last third of its text (lines 949-999) is supplied by a
Corrected Draft” (14). Canto is the last of four pieces of Shade’s poem. This
quote suggests that each Canto is a stage of Shade’s life that he is exploring. Al-
so, Nabokov’s phrasing of ‘Corrected Draft’ implies that Shade is going back to
parts of his life and reliving or reevaluating them. Later in the novel, when Disa
is in the process of writing a letter, she noticed when “… tall sheared and beard-
ed visitor with the bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods who had been watching her
from afar advanced through the garlands of shade” (206). The choice of Nabo-
kov using both ‘sheared’ and ‘bearded’ to describe the same man, could reveal
the idea that Shade is exploring the ways in which he had appeared throughout
his life. Also, the phrase ‘flowers-of-the-gods’, bring to mind polytheistic reli-
gions. Flowers, in these religions, often carry different symbolic meanings such
as life, death, fertility, purity, anger, joy, and many others. This phrase may al-
lude to John Shade compiling the different elements that made up his life, and
putting them all together in a bouquet, AKA, the story. The quote also, outright
states ‘garlands of shade’ which may represent the different stages of John
Shade’s life.
Announcer 1: Wow, that is a hefty amount of information to take in when con-
sidering who could possibly win the Nabokov Cup, Jill! Let’s take a look at the
second duo, All in a Haze Work.
Analysis 2
The idea that Hazel and Kinbote could be one person, and that Hazel wrote the
whole Pale Fire novel, or just some of it (All in a Haze Work), isn’t such a crazy
idea. First, much like Kinbote, Hazel is described as having an affection for liter-
ature. In the poem, it reads, “Sometimes I’d help her with her Latin text, / Or
she’d be reading in her bedroom…” (46). The fact that every word that Nabokov
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