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Re: Mr Wood and the "leggy thing"
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CK wrote: ...surely Pnin thinks in Russian? especially in moments of panic. I think "leggy thing" is pure perfect Nabokovian English, but perhaps Alexey can translate "leggy thing" for us back into a possible Pninian Russian expression?
JM: Nut-crackers were objective "leggy things" and, in my early childhood, their motion of opening and closing was "horizontal". Later, thanks to Tchaikovsky's regular Xmas presentations of "The Nutcracker", my mental and propioceptive responses began to include a legless, open-mouthed, vertically-cracking thing.
I wonder now if VN's choice of a leggy metal instrument dropping onto a delicate crystal bowl, independently of its name in English or Russian ( in French "Hazel", not "nuts" appears in the word "Casse-Noisettes") might also suggest a kind of "cultural" shock through the signalled transition bt. sensations that change from left-right, east-west to up-down, north-south ( or vice versa)
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JM: Nut-crackers were objective "leggy things" and, in my early childhood, their motion of opening and closing was "horizontal". Later, thanks to Tchaikovsky's regular Xmas presentations of "The Nutcracker", my mental and propioceptive responses began to include a legless, open-mouthed, vertically-cracking thing.
I wonder now if VN's choice of a leggy metal instrument dropping onto a delicate crystal bowl, independently of its name in English or Russian ( in French "Hazel", not "nuts" appears in the word "Casse-Noisettes") might also suggest a kind of "cultural" shock through the signalled transition bt. sensations that change from left-right, east-west to up-down, north-south ( or vice versa)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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