Subject
Quizz Quisana, qu'est-ce que c'est?
From
Date
Body
"He [Van] started to caress her [Cordula] under the table, but she gently removed his hand, whispering 'womenses,' as whimsically as another girl had done in some other dream... She talked on and on... reflecting her brief bright affair with Marquis Quizz Quisana." (Ada, 1.42)
As has been pointed out before, "Quizz Quisana" hints at Quisisana, a popular restaurant on the Nevsky Avenue in the pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg. The place teemed with prostitutes, syphilitics, cocaine addicts, etc. The jokers used to say: "mens sana in Quisisana."
There is mens in menses and menses in 'womenses' (the Brownhill schoolgirl slang). Btw., in my translation of Ada I coined the word женструация that neatly blends женщина (woman) with менструация (menstrual flow).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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As has been pointed out before, "Quizz Quisana" hints at Quisisana, a popular restaurant on the Nevsky Avenue in the pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg. The place teemed with prostitutes, syphilitics, cocaine addicts, etc. The jokers used to say: "mens sana in Quisisana."
There is mens in menses and menses in 'womenses' (the Brownhill schoolgirl slang). Btw., in my translation of Ada I coined the word женструация that neatly blends женщина (woman) with менструация (menstrual flow).
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/