Pale Fire vs. Sartor Resartus

So the exam has passed, thank goodness, and now we move on to another masterful work by Nabokov. That is Pale Fire. I have read Pale Fire before and while I find the "commentary" confusing at times, it is the poem that I love to read over and over again. I read most of it over the weekend, but I am still slowly making my way through the last part. I was not sure what my first blog on the work was going to be and then I had classes today.

For Brit. Lit. II today we read Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, which once again while dense, is thoroughly enjoyable. While discussing it in class though the topic was brought up about what kind of writing style this work is. Is it fiction, an autobiography or an essay? In a sense it is all three and that is when I instantly thought of Pale Fire.

Like Carlyle, Nabokov makes up all the characters in his work Pale Fire, from the author to the commentator. Both works hold some truth in their reflection of the man who wrote them. They are obscure and dense, and are there to teach and inform the reader.

I was intrigued by the idea that this kind of writing came rather early in the Victorian period, only about 66 years before Nabokov was born. I knew Nabokov was creative and intelligent, and that he knew and studied many forms of writing. I just never expected to find one in my Brit. Lit. class! Both these works are fiction in that all characters and places are made up. They are both autobiographies in that they reflect the men who wrote them. This is seen through the similarities of the tales with their authors lives, and they are essays in that they inform the reader and have a "commentary" on the bulk of the writing.

Both Nabokov and Carlyle wrote works that were make believe but reflected the world around them, and they chose to do this through an author/philosopher and his commentator. I always knew Nabokov was intelligent, and this masterful work just proves that once again.

Like Dr. Sexson said nothing is ever new, it is always returning to us in many other forms. We can never be original and even Nabokov knew this. It is the myth of the eternal return!