[nickdrozd]

At the end of the foreword, Kinbote says:

> Let me state that without my notes Shade's text simply has no human reality at all, since the human reality of such a poem as his ... has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so forth, a reality that only my notes can provide. To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed, but, for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.

Final exam questions:

1. To what extent did Nabokov agree or disagree with this approach to literary criticism?

2. Did Nabokov personally identify more with Shade or with Kinbote?

[vessenes]

Oof, I hate these questions. Nabokov would have hated 1 as a question because Pale Fire is a sort of extended essay about this very thing, written in the voice of a narcissistic obsessive weirdo and providing him with a sort of chorus response as a poem.

2 feels simplistic to me as well, when asked about one of the great masters of characterization. If you ask who did he sympathize with more, then I’d say possibly ‘neither’.