Protagonist struggle

I think I am beginning to love Charles Kinbote.

The more I read about synesthesia, eideticism and the book itself, the more I feel that Kinbote is either ignored or dismissed as just insane.  A chapter called, "The Gift," in one of my books talks on and on about how Nabokov endows his protagonist with his unique synesthesia/eidetic traits; and for Pale Fire, John Shade is seen as that protagonist.  His eideticism is especially evident in the poem: "All colors made me happy: even gray./My eyes were such that literally they/ Took photographs" (ln 29-31), "I've tried/ So often to evoke them that today/ I have a thousand parents. Sadly they/ Dissolve in their own virtues and recede,/ But certain words, chance words I hear or read" (ln 72-76), "I had a brain, five sense (one unique)" (ln 130), and so on.  Nabokov gives Shade his genius.  That's fair to say.  He can look at life from a variety of perspectives, but in a sense, he's still "normal" and for me, he's a bit pale.  His poem is excellent, but the man himself is like a pressed flower-- delicate, crumbly.  He's passive and nice, and people seem to like him, but he is like a playing piece.

Kinbote, on the other hand, is not likeable at all.  The lady at the store flat out tells him he is a pain in the ass.  He totally steals Shade's poem as the poet lies bleeding to death; and McCarthy says he basically kills that poem with his nonsense.   Kinbote's a Narcissistic lunatic, but at the same time, I find his seemingly narrow-minded world to be quite vibrant and intriguing.  He's just as eidetic as Shade in his descriptions: "All three shelves and the space beneath were stuffed with disparate objects: a palette with the dregs of many sunsets; a cupful of counters; an ivory backscratcher; a thirty-twomo edition of Timon of Athens translated into Zemblan by his uncle Conmal, the carat blue diamond accidentally added in his childhood, from his late father's knickknackatory, to the pebbles and shells in that pail; a finger of chalk; and a square board with a design of interlaced figures for some long-forgotten game" (p 125). Even though the world he fabricates is fantasy, it is just as vivid and detailed as Shade's world.  The latter is just more widely accepted, because it is more normal and considered genius.  But Shade is not the supposed creator of the "paper-chase."  He is not the guy, who shattered life as we know it and rearranged it in a frustrating construct.  Shade is the not the creator of parallel worlds.  Nabokov instead gave all that power to Kinbote.

Breanna remarked in her discoveries that "Kinbote created Shade…Shade functions as a reflection of Kinbote, not the other way around."  I think she's right in emphasizing Kinbote, but I'm not sure you could really say that Shade is a reflection of Kinbote or that Kinbote is a reflection of Shade, because it's difficult to say who is actually the real person.  I'm not too sure it even matters, but I still feel that Kinbote is just something more.  

Maybe we don't like to draw attention to him, because he demands it in his commentary.  He's the part of the moon we see every night, because we have to; and Shade, who sits on the other side, seems more mysterious and alluring, but Kinbote's a mystery staring us in the face.  He's a mystery of life, I think.  He's constantly alluding to the "Shadows" or "Shade" or "darkness" that looms down.  Shade is death.  "the reflection of the waxwings slain" is a kind of shadow, a mirage, that lured that bird to doom.  Shade is dead throughout the poem.  He's not real.  Kinbote gives both Shade's world and his own world life.  


And the more I keep comparing them, the more insane I will seem.  I just like Kinbote. He's a good protagonist.