1.
Inverting Kinbote’s
Index
Nabokov Upside Down
12th January 2012
Simon Rowberry
Simon.Rowberry@winchester.ac.uk

2.
Pale Fire as Hypertext
• Pale Fire fits the condition of many
definitions of hypertext:
• link-and-node network model (1st
generation)
• Extensive use of paratextual devices (2nd
generation)
• Hyper + Text
extensible texture
• Both uni- and multi-cursal (ergodic)
• Deconstructed hypertext

3.
• Curiously enough, one cannot read a
book: one can only reread it. A good
reader, a major reader, an active and
creative reader is a rereader‟
• Nabokov, „Good Readers and Good Writers‟

4.
504 explicit connections
37% notes referring to the poem
63% notes referencing other notes
69% of all references coming from the index

5.
A sense of closure
“CHARLES KINBOTE
Oct. 19, 1959, Cedarn, Utana”
“Some neighbor‟s gardener, I guess – goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane”
“But whatever happens, wherever the scene is
laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out –
somebody has already set out, somebody still
rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a
bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking
towards a million photographers, and presently
he will ring at my door – a bigger, more
respectable, more competent Gradus.”
“Zembla, a distant northern land.”

6.
What are we meant to do with the
Index?
• “Although those notes, in conformity with
custom, come after the poem, the reader is
advised to consult them first and then study
the poem with their help, rereading them of
course as he goes through its text, and
perhaps, after having done with the poem,
consulting them a third time so as to
complete the picture.” (PF, 25)
• No mention of Index within the bulk of the
commentary either

7.
The Island Model of Pale Fire
Figure 2. Generalized model of
connections in Pale Fire based on Broder
et al’s model
Commentary
(and foreword)
Index Poem
Occasional
unconnected section
2 connections

8.
“An index permits the reader to locate passages
that share the same word, phrase, or subject and
so associates passages that may be widely
separated in the pages of the book. In one sense
the index defines other books that could be
constructed from the materials at hand, other
themes that the author could have formed into
an analytical narrative, and so invites the reader
to read the book in alternative ways. By offering
multiplicity in place of a single order of
paragraphs and pages, an index transforms a
book from a tree into a network. There need not
be any privileged element in a network, as there
always is in a tree, no single topic that dominates
all others.”
• (Bolter 2001:34)

9.
Editorial bias or Kinbote‟s
confession?
• “The index is the second transforming layer covering - or
smothering - or totally transforming - a 999-line
autobiographical poem” (Bell 1997:209)
• “'Bias' would be too weak a word to apply to the indexer's
selection and terminology: it gives a fine example of editorial
power corrupting. Enemies are disdainfully dismissed, not even
accorded naming: mentioned in subheadings, hated 'Prof. C',
'E', and 'Prof. H' are each followed by a parenthesis, '(not in
Index); while Shade's beloved wife, Sybil, to whom the poem is
addressed throughout, and whom the commentary bitterly
denigrates, receives from the vindictive homosexual Kinbote
the sole entry: 'Shade, Sybil, S's wife, passim‟” (Bell 1997:210)

10.
Inverting Botkin
• Botkin, V., American scholar of
Russian descent, 894; king-bot,
maggot of extinct fly that once bred in
mammoths and is thought to have
hastened their phylogenetic end, 247;
bottekin-maker, 71; bot, plop, and
boteliy, big-bellied (Russ.); botkin or
bodkin, a Danish stiletto.

11.
Inverting Botkin
• Botkin, V., bottekin-maker, 71; king-
bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred
in mammoths and is thought to have
hastened their phylogenetic end, 247;
American scholar of Russian descent,
894;

12.
Translations, poetical; English into
Zemblan, Conmal's version of
Shakespeare, Milton, Kipling, etc.,
noticed, 962; English into French, from
Donne and Marvell, 678; German into
English and Zemblan, Der Erlkonig, 662;
Zemblan into English, Timon Afinsken, of
Athens, 39; Elder Edda, 79; Arnor's
Miragirl, 80.