Presentations Day 3

Maria: I really enjoyed the exercise in reality/fantasy of Pale Fire. I also would like to suggest that instead of a multi-level memory palace, Nobokov (or Podkin) used a memory chess board-placing each important memory within a portion of the chess board. Perhaps I am overly obsessed with chess, but I also couldn't help but notice that Hakon VII, whose pin was H7, is symbolic of a kingside location on the chess board. (Also, X is the symbol for crowning a chess piece). Your presentation made me think of the chess board as not only a literary device employed by Nabokov as a mental game, but it also made me realize that within each portion of the novel, within each different square of the chess board, Nabokov has hidden memories of history, mythology, philosophy, biology, mathematics, music, etc. Pale Fire is, in its essence, Nabokov's memory palace for the world and all his favorite bits of knowledge of the world. It is through Pale Fire that we have a window into Nabokov's mind and the world contained within it.