A Case for Kinbote

In first encoutnering Charles Kinbote, we are faced with a man that few can tolerate let alone sympathize with. His forward and commentary, even the index that he has appended, to the poem of his dead friend John Shade have nothing to do with the poem itself. He is constantly telling us of a story about a king in exile from the distant land of Zembla. As we move deeper into the commentary we are forced time and again to read of the "sad" story of a Zemblan king that many of us could not care less for, and eventually it wears on us.

Yet, when we look deeper, I think that we can begin to see something else creeping out of the endless dregs of Zemblan references. Perhaps there is more to Charles Kinbote than meets the eye. Perhaps he is the lost king Charles Xavier. Could this be? there are many hints throughout the forward and even in the commentary to the point that I begin to think that he is indeed our exiled king.

With that revelation I have come to realize that Charles Kinbote is not writing about Zembla because he is a pompous ass. Rather, he is constantly writing about Zembla because he has lost something that is truly precious to him. Perhaps it is my own fault for not recognizing it on first reading the book. I did not see as Kinbote saw.

I now think that Kinbote is writing about Zembla much as John Shade wrote about his daughter Hazel. Both were stripped of something precious to them, violently, suddenly, and with no sense of control in the matter. As Kinbote reads the poem by a dead poet who is lost to a bullet meant for him, perhaps he sees Zembla because the loss that he feels pouring off the page reminds him so much of the loss that he felt when being exiled from his beloved home. He reciprocates the feelings that Shade expresses in his poem the only way that he knows how, in a forward and commentary that tell his own tragic story.

Perhaps it is a bit arrogant to associate the death of a child with the loss of a country. But how do we know? I myself have experienced neither of these things. I can only imagine how horrible it was for John Shade to recieve the news of his daughters death. I can only imgaine the fear that gripped Xavier as he was forced to flea the homeland that he had loved and been a part of all of his life.

I think that Kinbote felt the same way. He could not comprehend the loss of a child because it had not happened to him, and so could not adequately do justice to such a beautiful poem by pompously assuming that he could write of the pain of a child's death. Perhaps then he took the higher road, writing of the loss of a country, which he could understand. He is not trying to be arrogant. I think that it just appears so to those of us who cannot reciprocate.

Perhaps, then, it is we who are the arrogant ones, assuming that we know why Kinbote would write of his homeland rather than the death that so blatantly stands out in the poem. I would urge, each of you then to reread Pale Fire in this new light. If, in the end, you still feel that Kinbote is an ass, then perhaps he is, but maybe we can see, beneath the arrogant talk, a pain that is too hard to express in anything other than a beautiful poem. It is a pale fire. Not bright and illuminary, but soft and subtle, so that we do not have to cry twice while reading the book.