I apologize about the images. . .I guess they don't want to show up : (
Bizz Browning
Mything the Point
Sexson
November 21, 2011
Abnormal Perceptions: A Look at Pale Fire From the Perspective of
Synaesthesia, Dyslexia and the Context of Learning Disabilities
Like most of his writings, Pale Fire by Vladimir
Nabokov, has been considered a controversial text since it was first published.
With multiple reviews ranging from “brilliant” to “total wreck,” the
book received the following criticism done by George Cloyne from the New York
Times in 1962. Although Cloyne acknowledged Nabokov’s genius
in his critique, his overall confusion reflected a negative reactive attitude
many readers felt (and still feel) towards Pale Fire.
But the fantasy never gets off the
ground, and the didacticism is never clearly enough directed. In order to react to the notion of
an imaginary country the reader has to see it in a vivid light.
He has to feel himself involved. Invented countries with the ring of imaginative truth
about them, such as Lilliput, always have a certain simplicity to justify their
existence. . . But a world that has laboriously
to be constructed through footnotes, is likely to intrigue its creator alone (Cloyne).
Cloyne’s review of the book is both a compliment and complaint,
reflecting a misunderstanding of Navokov’s method, the code, which he uses to
weave the novel together. Because the book contains a
complex structure and setting, Cloyne tries to degrade Pale Fire to the
inside joke of a ridiculous genius. He recognizes
Nabokov’s reputation as an intellectual, but his tone implies resentment
towards the world Nabokov created, because it excludes him from the underlying
meaning. He cannot organize and understand the
information given to him in the preface, poem, commentary and index.
It is too chaotic.
This general response to Pale Fire mimics what
we perceive people with LD (learning disabilities) to feel when confronted with
any kind of “normal” text. It is a feeling of confusion and
frustration, a feeling of misunderstanding and stupidity. LD people, especially those with a form of
dyslexia, are surrounded by connotations of “handicapped” or “disadvantaged,”
because they don’t see what we see and get frustrated.
Their brains don’t process information the same way, which causes us to
think they have a problem, because they cannot keep up or produce the “correct”
answers that the average person can; but Nabokov, who is not an average man,
has flipped that perception in his novel by making his book the “norm” and the
public-at-large learning disabled.
Nabokov, who is a synaesthete (which has been
perceived as a mental handicap or madness) and an eidetic, infuses his gift of
unique perception, inverting the usual reading structure and weaving in dyslexic,
mirrored themes to create a different kind of aesthetic—one that inspires
discoveries, new ways of thinking and joy through the disassembly of
information and reassembly of that information with new instructions; however
most readers cannot stand to swim through the frustration.
They do not see Pale Fire as a game of mirrors and inversions,
which we can play if we re-educate ourselves in how we navigate.
Instead, they see it as a labyrinth and quit before they try, following Cloyne’s
easy way out by accepting that they can never truly experience Nabokov’s
dyslexic or “abnormal” ways of seeing (and perhaps expressing the idea that
they would never want to). But even though there is some
truth in that sentiment, that they can never truly see the world and the worlds
Nabokov creates through his eyes, any attempts to alter the way we decode and
order information add depth and richness to what we think we already know,
splitting open the shell we live in and broadening our imagination.
It is ironic that Cloyne says the “reader has to see it (Pale Fire)
in a vivid light,” because that is how Nabokov probably envisioned the novel to
begin with. Synaesthesa, which literally means “to
perceive” (esthesia) together (syn), is a “neurological phenomenon, which
occurs when a stimulus in one sense modality immediately evokes a sensation in
another sense modality” (van Campen 1). It can cause
people to hear colors (different colors can stimulate sound in the brain), to
see sound (sounds stimulate colors to appear in one’s vision) to taste colors
etc. (Dann 11).
Back in the 1800s, this kind of ability appealed to the Romantics and
Symbolists, who felt it was a key to transcendence. They thought synaesthetes were in
touch with “the true realities” which only exist in dreams (Dann 17,18).
In a way, this is a huge misconception, because synaesthesia is a
condition of mental imagery as opposed to a link to spiritual worlds; but even
though the combined sensory intake takes place within the individual’s mind,
the idea that synaesthetes are making it all up is equally false.
Some scientists (even those from present day) consider the synaesthetic
condition to be either a result of overactive imagination or drug induced
hallucinations; however most synaesthetes are not even aware that what they
perceive differs from the norm and do not try to create the images they
perceive naturally (van Campen 17). A
seven-year-old girl, for example, wrote a story for her teacher about a
butterfly and the alphabet. The butterfly flew around and
encountered all the letters of the alphabet and the colors attached to them.
He didn’t like the associations between the letters and the colors, so
he used his magic to change around all the colors attached to the letters (van
Campen 4). The teacher, who read this, commented on the
story’s originality, but the girl didn’t understand that no one else saw
letters the way she did. Nabokov reveals a similar
experience in his autobiography, stating that “The long a of the English alphabet . . .has
for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes a polished ebony. This black
group also includes hard g
(vulcanized rubber) and r (a sooty
rag being ripped)” (Speak Memory 21). Both
Nabokov’s and the little girl’s synaesthesia has nothing to do with using their
imagination or taking LSD—it is simply how their brains absorb and process
information.
Studies from the past century debate back and forth about whether
synaesthesia is positive or negative; however, many papers suggest that synaesthesia
boosts memory recall and ties directly to another kind of mental imagery:
eideticism, a condition, which allows a person to voluntarily recall images
from the past, creating a kind of hallucination, which plays on all senses, not
just sight. (Dann 7,12).
Nabokov, who proclaimed himself proudly as both a synaesthete and an
eidetic imager, often gifted his literary characters with the same talents.
John Shade, the poet of the novel, displays synaesthetic/eidetic qualities
at various points in his four cantos. A vivid
example is evident in Canto One:
All colors
made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were
such that literally they
Took
photographs. Whenever I’d permit,
Or, with a
silent shiver, order it,
whatever in
my field of vision dwelt. . .
Was printed
on my eyelids’ nether side . . .
And while
this lasted all I had to do
Was close my
eyes to reproduce the leaves,
Or indoor
scene, or trophies of the eaves (Pale Fire 34).
Shade
discusses here his ability to capture memories in photographic detail, explaining
his method in producing the highly descriptive scenes in the rest of his poem;
but even though the images he creates are wonderfully specific, there are
limits to what he can and cannot remember. “I was an
infant when my parents died./ . . I’ve tried/So often to evoke them . . ./ Sadly they/Dissolve in their own virtues and recede,/But certain words,
chance words I hear or read” (Pale Fire 35).
The words reflect the frustration Nabokov feels about his own mind,
because even though he has an astounding gift for memory, there exists a point,
beyond which no synaesthete/eidetic imager can see. That ability to see further into the past is
left up to the imagination.
Given Nabokov’s pride in his unique
perceptions, it is not surprising to see that color themes play an important
role in the novel. Meanings associated with colors constantly
move around and change places, creating relationships between the signifying
color and its meaning, which is consistent with synaesthesic thinking (Dann 34).
Shade’s poem (and life) reflects a wide color palette, as he creates
connections like a “sun of rubber” and “blood-black nothingness” and “false
azure of the windowpane” which at first, sound merely like the imagery of an
imaginative poet; but actually reflect the objects he sees (Pale Fire
59). The commentator, Charles Kinbote, on the
other hand, focuses on two colors from Shade’s poem, green and red, and
continually re-invents the meaning of those signifiers.
For example, the meaning of green fluctuates from “enemy” (Gerald
Emerald), to “parachute safety” to “green thumbed” savior, all associations,
which are not usual for that color (McCarthy).
In a normative sense, the color green can denote a sense of security, of
“camouflage, for Nature, being green at least in summer, can hide a green-clad
figure in her verdue”(McCarthy). But the color red, which usually
stands out, is the color which is used to depict escape for Kinbote, allowing
him to blend in with his supporters and leave Zembla.
However, while Kinbote’s red and
green commentary does relate to the theme of synaesthesia, it holds even
greater significance for the theme of dyslexia, which will be discussed in
greater depth later.
Nabokov
illustrates many positive aspects of synaesthesia and eideticism, but not
everyone shares his views. Some, who have accepted the neurological
nature of these conditions, consider the two forms of mental imagery as
“monstrous, pathological or abnormal” (Dann 28).
Early 1900 studies connected synaesthesia to autistic thinking, as well
as negative connotations associated with “the symbolism of ‘savages,’
‘psychotics’ and children,” implying that this unique perception was primitive,
crazy or an example of overactive imagination (Dann 95).
There have been reports that many children display synaesthetic
qualities, but are discouraged in that realm of sensory development, because it
is not mature or useful (Dann 125). Nabokov’s
comment on that topic is caustic as he says, “I’m told by psychologists that
most children have it (synaesthesia), that later they lose that aptitude when
they are told by stupid parents that it’s all nonsense” (Strong Opinions).
This remark is not surprising as Nabokov’s own mother encouraged his
childhood gift by painting pictures for him and letting him play with her
colorful jewelry; but it does not make much of a dent against the connotation
that children do not have anything to offer cognitively—that their thoughts are
underdeveloped and their imagination, too fantastic to be useful (Speak Memory
22).
Others negative responses towards synaesthesia have been labels as
“degenerative diseases,” “mental decay,” or “inversions” similar to
homosexuality, in that synaesthesia creates illogical relationship with senses
as homosexuality does with genders (Dann 33, 34).
Shade’s unique perceptions do not alert the readers to anything like
this, because they manifest themselves as lines of poetry.
His imagery and “color metaphors” can simply be read as artistic license
as a poet rather than ravings of a mad man; and because Shade interacts with
others in a socially acceptable manner (unlike those with autism), and because
he is obviously a heterosexual, it is difficult to tell that he is much
different from the norm at all. The man, who actually does take
on all the negative ideas surrounding unique perceptions, is a man wishing to
be like Shade, who wishes to have the “synaesthetic perception, which is
forever inventing the world anew” (Dann 122).
Kinbote idealizes Shade as a man who can create a new reality.
He tries to mimic Shade’s gift to reflect his own life in Shade’s poem;
but though it is doubtful that he truly shares the same gifts as the poet, the
way he views reality is definitely not textbook normal.
From the structure of the book to the content of his interpretations,
Kinbote displays dyslexic tendencies in how he interprets Shade’s poem.
Dyslexia, which literally means “difficulty (dys) with words (lexia),”
is like synaesthesia in that it has a neurological basis, but unlike the
manifestations of combined senses, dyslexia manifests itself as an “inability
to decode and sound out words phonetically” or rather an inability to decode
information in a way that is the norm (Waite).
The many mistranslations and word plays in the novel lend themselves to
this definition of dyslexic thinking. Hazel Shade,
who is Kinbote’s female entity, often mixed up letters, “pot, top,/ Spider,
redips. And
‘powder’ was ‘red wop’” for fun, while Kinbote himself boasts of coming up with
‘T.S. Eliot’ and ‘toilest’ (Pale Fire
45). These are presented in the text as word games,
but the backwards and rearranged aspect of the words suggest they could have
been the result of a dyslexic mind, taking words apart and putting them back
together to create different kinds of meaning.
The text Hazel transcribed, “pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan
ther tale feur far rant lant tal told,” is another example of dyslexic text,
which omits letters, leaving a cryptic message to decipher.
Although Shade is identified more with synaesthesia
than dyslexia, an example can be seen in Shade’s contemplation of “Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch./ Life Everlasting—based on a
misprint!” (Pale Fire 62). This is
classic substitution, an act which occurs when the mind struggles to comprehend
the text and tries to fill in the gaps with letters. While this kind of strategy does not
necessarily lean towards showing the person with dyslexia what he wants to see
as truth, Shade seems to have made that mistake subconsciously in order to keep
himself from conjuring up a fixed idea of the afterlife, so that he can
continue to make connections in some “kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind/Of
correlated pattern in the game” (Pale Fire 63). Kinbote uses this technique of
coping in writing his book, by substituting Shade’s poem with his commentary,
creating an entirely different purpose and meaning for the text.
He uses his processing method of disorientation to make the wild
connections he makes in his notes, creating Zembla (though a real imaginary
place) out of semblances,
substituting spellings and creating a clever word play on mirrored reflections
all in one go.
“Disorientation” is a term used when describing dyslexia, because the
Davis Dyslexia Association states that “disorientation” is a key factor in how
perceptions are distorted in the brain, because it is a tool to help an
individual examine and ultimately recognize a stimulus.
It is not necessarily a negative thing, as it can be a talent,
which allows dyslexics, who are visual-spatial learners, to “problem-solve,
create, invent, engineer and escape by using their extraordinary and vibrant
multi-sensory thoughts” in real life situations (The Cause of Dyslexia);
however when applying those talents to the written word, confusion can reign,
leading to hurried or distorted conclusions. Disorientation
creates false perceptions in order to make sense out of the confusing stimulus
(The Cause of Dyslexia). In say a classroom, this process
is viewed negatively, because it seems to put dyslexic students further behind
non-dyslexic learners. They are not receiving the same
messages and are thus led down a wrong path; but in Pale Fire, there are
no wrong paths, only a misconceived illusion of an ending point.
Although this model is not seen negatively in Nabokov’s world, in the
world of normal, the wrong conclusions created from disorientation are further stigmatized
as confused and incorrect because of the other conditions with are often
co-morbid with dyslexia. These “problems,” such as
Attention-Deficit Disorder and depression, discredit the thinker, making his
label of “learning disabled” more concrete. From the first
page of Pale Fire, Kinbote identifies himself as ADD, stating that “he
(Shade) preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or
third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in
front of my present lodgings” (Pale Fire 13).
This ADD characteristic immediately gives an impression that Kinbote is
an unreliable narrator. It creates doubt as to his claims
of friendship with Shade and to his claims of professorship; but those claims
are not actually disproven, even though Kinbote’s identity is not what it seems.
Readers simply assume that the text is created in chaos, because of
Kinbote’s character. They don’t try to imagine a
method to the madness.
The entire foreword marks a battle of organization as Kinbote struggles
between writing about Shade and about himself.
It foreshadows the kind of tug-of-war between Kinbote’s memories of Shade’s
genius and Kinbote’s comments about himself in the rest of the novel, as Kinbote’s
narrative reflects a hefty case of narcissism, another condition related to
mirrored realties and inversion. Narcissism plays a relevant role
in Kinbote’s dyslexic perception, because he wants to see himself reflected in
everything. However, the reflection he wants to see is not
actually who he is. Kinbote himself is an inverted image of a
professor named V.
Botkin. Botkin, or “king-bot” is an “American scholar
of Russian descent,” who, on one level of the book, is considered crazy and delusional
(Pale Fire 360). He is the kind of person, “who
deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant
invention” (Pale Fire 238). Botkin has viewed his own life in a skewed mirror, desiring
to see the opposite of himself: someone handsome, mysterious and royal, which
leads him to create Kinbote; but the man he created is also a man, who desires
to see himself in a world inverse to his own. Given how the narrative bounces between a normal
world and its inverse counterpart, from “reality” to “imagined reality,” McCarthy’s
statement that the novel is a “shadow box” with “a false bottom. . . a book of mirrors” rings quite true.
Another mirror quality of the novel revolves around the structure of a
game of chess, because the two sides of the board reflect each other.
This figures into a dyslexic definition as the mirrored sides aren’t
exact replicas, but are instead inverted images, which also differ in color. Chess is often referenced in both
the poem and the commentary, because the characters within the novel are
(knowingly or unknowingly?) pieces of a game “played on a board of green and
red squares” (McCarthy). Kinbote, the king-bot, acts as the lone black king running away from Gradus,
whose moves mirror Shade’s lines (McCarthy). The sections
within the commentary and the poem reflect chess problems, created (or
imagined) by Kinbote, who, as a dyslexic, can probably see how the moves will
pan out. Because dyslexics are such visual-spatial
learners, they are more able to comprehend the abstract thinking required for
chess, which gives them the potential to excel in chess strategy (“Chess and
Special Needs Education”). Nabokov, as an eidetic imager,
similarly uses his thinking process to play chess.
He can “lay out a chessboard in his mind and then set it in motion in
order to visualize the outcomes of various strategems” (Dann 139).
Just as Kinbote employs the content of the poem and commentary to form
his chessboard and plot his moves, Nabokov plays on the entire structure of the
book, from preface to index, using his characters and his readers as chess
pieces to play the game.
The most maddening (and arguably most brilliant) aspect of the book for
readers is the format of the novel, because it is utterly dyslexic and confusing.
But when the audience literally accepts the dyslexic context, they can
see how the book itself is a game of chess, seemingly played between readers and
Kinbote, who controls the hopscotch instructions and random asides and makes
the game flow in no logical manner we can understand.
Because Kinbote does stand for one side of the board, it is easy to
assume that he is directing the audience towards a specific point in order to
win; but Nabokov, the mastermind behind the book, is really the man calling the
shots. Those who try to read the board with stakes
in mind (reality vs the dyslexic illusion) or play with an agenda will not get
anywhere, because the end result of a winner or loser is not relevant.
Nabokov has already planned all the outcomes like God, making “all the
chess games played by characters in the story draws” and the end of a novel a
“kind of draw, if not a stalemate” (McCarthy).
Kinbote, as the commentator, has absorbed Shade’s poem, taken it apart
and put it back together to create Zembla, Gradus and the Shadows conspiracy.
As readers, we are forced to accept this encoded material as truth,
because Shade is dead, leaving his poem with “no human reality” (Pale Fire
28). However, the sectioned chaos, flipping from
preface to poem to commentary to index, induces a dyslexic reaction in readers,
especially in those, who try to read the book as they would a normal text.
Not being able to understand the meaning, those readers substitute their
own ideas into the gaps between the notes. They read into
the text making connections upon connections. While some
might feel that this cycle of disorientation takes the audience further and
further away from Shade’s poetic intent, it is possible that this confusion
actually leads them closer to Nabokov’s authorial intent, which is to explain
that there are no right or wrong answers, that there is no point.
The book is just art made with the purpose to compose it, to “work hard. . .long, on a body of words until it grants me (Nabokov) complete possession
and pleasure. If the reader has to work in his turn—so much
the better. Art is difficult.
Easy art is what you see at modern exhibitions of things and doodles.” And “art at its greatest is
fantastically deceitful and complex” (Strong Opinions). Pale Fire, as a piece of “great art,” is a lemniscate of recycled
information: Shade perceives the world with his synaesthetic/eidetic eyes and
expresses his perceptions in a poem, Botkin tales in the poem as Kinbote,
disassembles it and re-forms it into a new world, the reader looks at what
Kinbote has written, tries to understand and creates disoriented conclusions
about both Kinbote and Shade. Meanwhile Nabokov,
who, in reality, is the engineer behind the madness, watches as the world he
created is smashed and rebuilt again and again. It is a neverending story within a story, “a
system of cells interlinked/within/Cells interlinked within cells
interlinked/Within one stem,” because the amount of substitutions and
mistranslations readers can make from Kinbote’s misinterpretations are infinite
(Pale Fire 59).
Although the above paragraph references specifically the
readers, who try to read Pale Fire from cover to cover, the same cycle
of dyslexic disorientation can be applied to those, who read the novel as
Kinbote advises: hopping from note to note, from note to poem and from note to
preface, because regardless of how hard an audience tries to see the world via
the text through Kinbote’s eyes, it still won’t make sense to them at first. The structure is nonlinear, 3-dimensional and
(even though written out in words) image based, all qualities that appeal to
nonverbal learners such as dyslexics (Dyslexic Thinking). While it is too generalizing to state that
all non-dyslexics are not nonverbal learners or to say that all dyslexics can
understand Pale Fire’s structure, it is safe to point out that many
readers of Nabokov will struggle with his novel, because their brains are not
wired to think so spatially. So
for them, creating meaning will still take time, effort and misinterpretations,
but in following the commentator’s advice, readers skip a step towards making
conclusions and creating discoveries. They are less worried about being led astry,
moving away from the idea that Kinbote (and the book) is simply crazy and
instead moving towards an acceptance of the book as a complex piece of art, in
which they can engage.
Nabokov has never been known as a dyslexic, but his
synaesthetic/eidetic mental processes follow along the same kind of nonverbal
learning as those with dyslexia; and whether he intended to or not, he fashioned
Kinbote into an individual with dyslexic/ADD characteristics, thus creating a world,
which sees primarily through synaesthetic and dyslexic perceptions—perceptions
which are not normal to most of the population. In this way, Nabokov’s inverse, mirror world
of Pale Fire is a reflection of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, because he forms a universe with structure and
rules, which might make sense to its inhabitants, but mean nothing to
outsiders, who might stumble in on the game. Readers take Alice’s place as “a white pawn”
moved around the board, forced into a nonlinear storyline with no real end in
sight as Kinbote/Nabokov threatens to continue the game forever “assuming other
disguises, other forms,” trying and succeeding “to exist” in his immortal
wonderland, Zembla (Pale Fire 300).
The synaesthesic and dyslexic themes in the inverse
world are the admired traits, and ideally, if we readers take on a Kinbotian
frame of mind, we would try to take that admiration and apply it to normal,
everyday life. It
would seem that that has even begun to take hold, as more current studies on
dyslexia consistently emphasize the strengths of that kind of spatial learner;
however most of those studies also offer methods to teach individuals with
dyslexia to re-wire their thinking and perception in order to fit in with the
normal academic environment.
While teaching dyslexics how to view the world through different lenses
is probably a positive idea, no one would ever suggest helping “normal”
learners to see through a spatial lens. Pale Fire requires a reader to use a
part of the brain, which most have not used since childhood—a part which
accepts strange connections and multi-sensory thinking. Most of society has been trained to look only
for specific answers.
Imagination only used within the confines of what is accepted. This novel pushes the imaginative muscle back
towards childhood limits (which are infinite), stretching conceptions of reality and illusion, blurring the lines, causing the reader to wonder whether or not his reality is striving (or should be striving) to become an imitation of art, a world of fantasy.
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