Subject
Sighting: Reference to Nabokov in a Brazilian literary suplement.
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Former posting by JM: quoting an interview with Jorio Dauster: " With
Nabokov it was literary love at first sight... through words and images he
leads the reader to inquire himself , for example, about the color of the
shadow of an apple." [ ] is it a direct quote, and then, where can it be
found?
Jansy Mello: Our attentive ED, Steve Blackwell, located what might have
been the source of Jorio Dauster's recollection: it derives from "Pnin".
"Victor already distinguished what so many adults never learn to see--the
colours of
shadows, the difference in tint between the shadow of an orange and that of
a plum or of an
avocado pear." (A few pages into chapter 4).
SB added: "It's funny, apples seem to be the archetypal fruit, at least in
the West. Although no fruit name is mentioned in Genesis, it's been thought
to be an apple since at least John Milton. (Nabokov calls Dolly's apple
"Eden-red", remember?) It seems that when the vague idea "fruit", or the
memory of some sitting fruits, comes to mind, apples tend to fill in the
blanks!"
During my exploring I found another lovely sentence mentioning an apple and
I couldn't resist the impulse to share it with the VN-L (sentences that have
the quality of a painting must be revisited from time to time):
"A village girl was eating an apple and her black shadow on the fence was
eating a slightly larger apple." The Defense
SIGHTING: Theo Hobson: Milton's vision: the Birth of Christian Liberty
"Blake learned from Milton to apply his prophetic style to the immanent
Fall, the gulf between our best and worst attitudes. And I also see a (less
direct) parallel in Nabokov's novel Lolita. For it forces us to confront the
adult's exile from natural goodness, as well as childhood innocence, and out
terrible attraction to witty evil. The voice of Humbert Humbert seduces its
style-loving readers, makes Eves of them. // Humbert's resemblance to Satan
is foregrounded at the beginning of Chapter Thirteen. The narrator comes
downstairs in his pyjamas and dressing-gown and finds his landlady's
twelve-year-old daughter bunking church[ ]. The scene is peppered with
references to Paradise Lost. We are meant to associate our witty narrator
with the Prince of Darkness himself. There are some rather obvious hints,
including the fact that the tussle begins over the 'Eden-red apple' Lolita
is eating [ ] He also tells us that his surreptitious act of
self-gratification sets 'all paradise loose'. // A subtler reference to Eden
comes right at the start of the chapter [ ]The creeping and eavesdropping
are quiet allusions to Book Nine of Paradise Lost, in which Satan takes on
snakey form in order to spy on Eden. "(Ch. The Epics, p.153)
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
Nabokov it was literary love at first sight... through words and images he
leads the reader to inquire himself , for example, about the color of the
shadow of an apple." [ ] is it a direct quote, and then, where can it be
found?
Jansy Mello: Our attentive ED, Steve Blackwell, located what might have
been the source of Jorio Dauster's recollection: it derives from "Pnin".
"Victor already distinguished what so many adults never learn to see--the
colours of
shadows, the difference in tint between the shadow of an orange and that of
a plum or of an
avocado pear." (A few pages into chapter 4).
SB added: "It's funny, apples seem to be the archetypal fruit, at least in
the West. Although no fruit name is mentioned in Genesis, it's been thought
to be an apple since at least John Milton. (Nabokov calls Dolly's apple
"Eden-red", remember?) It seems that when the vague idea "fruit", or the
memory of some sitting fruits, comes to mind, apples tend to fill in the
blanks!"
During my exploring I found another lovely sentence mentioning an apple and
I couldn't resist the impulse to share it with the VN-L (sentences that have
the quality of a painting must be revisited from time to time):
"A village girl was eating an apple and her black shadow on the fence was
eating a slightly larger apple." The Defense
SIGHTING: Theo Hobson: Milton's vision: the Birth of Christian Liberty
"Blake learned from Milton to apply his prophetic style to the immanent
Fall, the gulf between our best and worst attitudes. And I also see a (less
direct) parallel in Nabokov's novel Lolita. For it forces us to confront the
adult's exile from natural goodness, as well as childhood innocence, and out
terrible attraction to witty evil. The voice of Humbert Humbert seduces its
style-loving readers, makes Eves of them. // Humbert's resemblance to Satan
is foregrounded at the beginning of Chapter Thirteen. The narrator comes
downstairs in his pyjamas and dressing-gown and finds his landlady's
twelve-year-old daughter bunking church[ ]. The scene is peppered with
references to Paradise Lost. We are meant to associate our witty narrator
with the Prince of Darkness himself. There are some rather obvious hints,
including the fact that the tussle begins over the 'Eden-red apple' Lolita
is eating [ ] He also tells us that his surreptitious act of
self-gratification sets 'all paradise loose'. // A subtler reference to Eden
comes right at the start of the chapter [ ]The creeping and eavesdropping
are quiet allusions to Book Nine of Paradise Lost, in which Satan takes on
snakey form in order to spy on Eden. "(Ch. The Epics, p.153)
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L