Pale Fire: Three Notes towards a Thetic Solution

Nabokov Studies, 2 (1995), 87-103. CHRIS ACKERLEY (Dunedin, New Zealand) PALE FIRE: THREE NOTES TOWARDS A THETIC SOLUTION* There is, I suggest, a close analogy between the chess problem discussed in chapter 14 of Speak, Memory and the structure of Pale Fire. Few readers, it seems, have teased out the cryptic instructions which accompany that chess problem, and fewer still, I imagine, have related the problem to the novel. The three Notes offered here are not completely original , but are designed to convey something of the excitement which Nabokov expressed upon completion of the problem, and to intimate how a like excitement of discovery may inform our response to the novel. I propose, therefore, in my first Note, to look closely at the chess problem , and, at the risk of boring the few to whom its magic is manifest, to explicate in prosaic terms the solution which Nabokov proffers. Then, in my second Note, I shall outline the correspondences (of structure, theme and chronology) that exist between the two compositions, chess problem and novel. Finally, in my third Note, I shall look at the title "Pale Fire" and suggest that it too invokes something of the thetic mysteries intimated here, as our poetic understanding moves from Timon of Athens to Hamlet A constant point of reference is the chapter on Pale Fire (chapter 18) in Brian Boyd's Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years,' the argument of which may be furthered in the poetry of Shakespeare and chess. Note 1 : The Chess Problem. Beauchamp - Campbell (Onhava, 1928) Towards the end of chapter 14 of Speak, Memory,2 Nabokov dis * I should like to thank Andrew Caulton for stimulating my discussion of the Hamlet theme; Anthony Ker for checking my chess; and Brian Boyd for the endless arguments about Pale Fire which nave formed so much of the pleasant experience of this roundabout route. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991. Cited in text as AY. 2. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (New York: Putnam 's, 1966). Cited in text as SM. 88 Nabokov Studies cusses a chess problem particularly dear to him, not only because it rendered , with humor and grace, a difficult theme he had despaired of expressing before, but because, he felt, with its completion a whole period of his life had come to a satisfactory close: I remember one particular problem I had been trying to compose for months. There came a night when I managed at last to express that particular theme. It was meant for the delectation of the very expert solver. The unsophisticated might miss the point of the problem entirely, and discover its fairly simple, "thetic" solution without having passed through the pleasurable torments prepared for the sophisticated one. The latter would start by falling for an illusory pattern of play based on a fashionable avant-garde theme (exposing White's King to checks), which the composer had taken the greatest pains to "plant" (with only one obscure little move by an inconspicuous pawn to upset it). Having passed through this "antithetic" inferno the by now ultrasophisticated solver would reach the simple key move (bishop to c2) as somebody on a wild goose chase might go from Albany to New York by way of Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores. The pleasant experience of the roundabout route (strange landscapes, gongs, tigers, exotic customs, the thricerepeated circuit of a newly married couple round the sacred fire of an earthen brazier) would amply reward him for the misery of the deceit, and after that, his arrival at the simple key move would provide him with a synthesis of poignant artistic delight (291-92). The problem is detailed in the final paragraph of chapter 14, the pieces placed upon an imagined board (of cream and cardinal leather), and a brief outline offered of its central theme (293): "White begins and mates in two moves. The false scent, the irresistible 'try' is: Pawn to b8, becoming a knight, with three beautiful mates following in answer to disclosed checks by Black; but Black can defeat the whole brilliant affair by not checking White and making instead a modest dilatory move elsewhere on the board." The problem with...