The Inadmissible Abyss: Loss and Postmodernism in Nabokov's Pale Fire

While Modernism rose from the ashes of Victorian innocence, the Postmodern era came out of an even more complete loss of faith. Jean-Francois Lyotard characterized it as an "incredulity toward metanarratives," the epic stories that attempt to organize and explain a culture's experience ("Postmodernism"). This complete disorientation is perfectly expressed in the titular poem-within-a-novel of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire:

There was a time in my demented youth

When somehow I suspected that the truth

About survival after death was known

To every human being: I alone

Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy

Of books and people hid the truth from me (Nabokov 39).

The fictional poet John Shade is here not only questioning the very secrets of life and death, but the knowledge and motivations of his fellow human beings. This ontological Truman show of which young Shade believed himself the subject is absurd, but Postmodernism encourages us to think the unthinkable.

Further into this, the second canto of the poem, Nabokov continues on this line of exploration with the tragic tale of Shade's daughter who, after a life of isolation, drowns herself. It is a different kind of absurdity that leads to her death, but it is absurd all the same: senseless, pointless, irrational. Hazel Shade's mortal sin, it would seem, is plainness:

She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend:

Nature chose me so as to wrench and rend

Your heart and mine. At first we'd smile and say:

"All little girls are plump" or "Jim McVey

(The family oculist) will cure that slight

Squint in no time." And later: "She'll be quite

Pretty, you know"; and, trying to assuage

The swelling torment: "That's the awkward age."

"She should take riding lessons," you would say

(Your eyes and mine not meeting). "She should play

Tennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!

She may not be a beauty, but she's cute" (Nabokov 44).

When it becomes apparent that Hazel will never bloom, her mother insists that "lovemaking is not everything," and furthermore that virgins can be excellent writers (Nabokov 44). Though cold, this is the voice of reason. There is plenty Hazel could accomplish while still being lonely. Her father, seeing her torment, does everything he can for her, but to no avail. The suitors never come. Shade admits her flaws of personality as readily as he presents her physical shortcomings, calling her "my darling: difficult, morose - but still my darling" and describing how her pessimistic attitude spread to those around her (Nabokov 45).

Hazel Shade, her life and death, are perfectly Postmodern. They could not exist in any story that purported to have a moral, or claimed that life is fair. From her desperate search for meaning in the supernatural, to her descent into suicidal depression, to the very role she plays in Shade's life and poem and in Nabokov's novel, she is the embodiment of the philosophy that has no faith in anything.

Though there is evidence that Hazel takes after her father, he says she had "strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force / Of character" (Nabokov 45). Her communications with a mysterious light in the old barn are more explicitly described in the annotations to the poem - Hazel had dutifully noted where and when the spot of light appears, and at one point even transcribed what she believed it was trying to communicate - nonsense words. When she brought her parents with her to witness the spectacle, it never appeared. Later she describes encounters with poltergeists where objects are thrown across the room in her presence. In his analysis of the character, David Galef writes, "forsaking the world which has forsaken her, she finds some romance in the creation of a private spirit world" (Galef 423). He then summarizes: "...Hazel is the instigator rather than the observer of these phenomena, the author of a private world of signs and images...where creation ceases to have any relevance to outward reality, it borders on madness. When art loses the vital connection to a world outside the artist, it becomes bound up with death" (Galef 424).

Unlike many children, Hazel never had the luxury of believing in a kind world. A constant social outcast because of her appearance and personality, in her adolescent crisis she seeks meaning outside of the visible world. This pursuit, too, is hopeless. She is tangled in a search for meaning in the meaninglessness - a Postmodern web indeed.

Of his daughter, Shade says, "I think she always nursed a small mad hope" (Nabokov 46). Her very existence, even outside of her pursuit of spirituality, is a stronger support of Postmodernism than any academic argument could be. From childhood she is reviled for her looks; though not, it would seem, outwardly mocked, she is forced into certain positions because of appearance:

But let's be fair: while children of her age

Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,

My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,

And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room (Nabokov 44).

As a young woman, Hazel finally experiences her penultimate rejection when a blind date catches one glimpse of her and suddenly remembers an important appointment he must keep. It is utterly unfair, and utterly in keeping with the Postmodern view of the world.

After he'd gone the three young people stood

Before the azure entrance for a while.

Puddles were neon-barred; and with a smile

She said she'd be de trop, she'd much prefer

Just going home (Nabokov 47).

Hazel gets off the bus before her stop and steps into the half-thawed lake, drowning. She is a girl driven mad by a world that simply does not know how to deal with her - it neither openly accepts nor openly rejects her, and she sees no solution but to leave it behind forever, rather than existing in limbo or making art of it, as her father did.

"Pale Fire" is a poem preoccupied with death and the afterlife. Much of Canto Four concerns Shade's near-death experience and search for the meaning therein, and his constant struggles against those who tell him it has no significance. A search for someone who had a common experience ends in disappointment, and so Postmodernism once again rears its head. Still, it is Hazel's death that is most Postmodern of all.

Shade's analysis of his daughter's life is at once dispassionate and heartbreaking. He does not see her through rose-colored glasses, yet all the same he wishes she were still alive. Her death was pointless: absurd. In the poem, he bitterly cuts between Hazel's death and himself and his wife's mundane evening, unaware of the tragedy that is playing out by the lake:

"Are we quite sure she's acting right?" you asked.

"It's technically a blind date, of course.

Well, shall we try the preview of Remorse?"

And we allowed, in all tranquility,

The famous film to spread its charmed marquee;

The famous face flowed in, fair and inane:

The parted lips, the swimming eyes, the grain

Of beauty on the cheek, odd Gallicism,

And the soft form dissolving in the prism

Of corporate desire.

"I think," she said,

"I'll get off here." "It's only Lochanhead."

"Yes, that's okay." Gripping the stang, she peered

At ghostly trees. Bus stopped. Bus disappeared (Nabokov 49).

Like the failed quest for meaning in his near-death vision, Hazel's death points to a world where things don't happen as they should. It is this recurring theme and constant nods to the loss of faith that make Pale Fire such a perfect Postmodern novel.

Works Cited

Galef, David. "The Self-Annihilating Artists of Pale Fire." Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 31, No. 4. (Winter, 1985), pp. 421-437.

"Postmodernism." Critical Pedagogy on the Web. Jan. 18 2003. The University of Iowa.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage International, 1989.