Subject
Bend Sinister (JM to V. Fet on baldness,
to Sidsel on Freud and VN)
to Sidsel on Freud and VN)
From
Date
Body
Dear Victor Fet,
Your bold commentary on a child's bald head shone at me today while I began
to read again Bend Sinister.
I can hear your chuckle through ventriloquist Olga's words.
Best,Jansy
-----------------------
Hello, Sidsel,
you wrote:
>..."Hyde ... "a hide of land" and "holder of a hide"..."the
personal name appears to be feminine as in 'Ida'" (Dictionary of British
surnames, 1958,164) which would support a homo erotic or even queer
interpretation of what it is Hyde is hiding... I have been wondering if V.N.
cannot be accurate, why would he then pull out the reference? ...it is
almost as saying that "I met him at some party." The information achieved by
this coincidence authorizes Nabokov to put specific interpretations of the
names on the table and take of others (among these the Freudian)."
Reading VN with scholarly help ( recently, news on God's loaded dice), I
confirmed my suspicion that Nabokov wanted to rule over the Freudian
"Unconscious".
In his foreword to Bend Sinister we find a few 'name callings', when he
writes:
"The intruder is not the Viennese Quack...but an anthropomorphic deity
impersonated by me" and then, the fun begins: On BS, chapter one:"While he
was fumbling for the pass they bade him hurry and mentioned a brief love
affair they had had, or would have, or invited him to have with his mother"
.
He goes on: " 'I doubt, said Krug as he went through his pockets, 'whether
those fancies which have bred maggot-like from ancient taboos could be
really transformed into acts - and this for various reasons. Here it is'
( it almost wandered away while he was talking to the orphan - I mean the
nurse)."
Here VN mentions both the swear words "m...f.." together with the Oedipus
complex, plus a bonus of orphans and nurse. A joke that takes us nowhere, it
appears.
BS, in its first chapter, teems with allusions to Pale Fire: here we also
find a gentle gardener, cousin of a dumb guard called Gurk ( Carolyn
informed me the name Jekyll came from a relative of the well known English
gardener, Gertrude Jekyll", who was a friend RLS) recognizably invoked as a
gratuitous, but life-saving generality. The scenery includes a danger of
fathers being shot.
Some Padurogradian hybridization of tongues, from Slavic and "Danish" is
easy to track ( VN himself collaborated in solve these): "donje", for "dont
je", where all is quiet, and "te zankoriv" ( French Mallarmé, again: "dont
j'étais encore ivre") in the context of "fauns". Fighting becoming
'fakhtung/fahtung/flukhtung" in revolving scenes befuzzles me completely.
Tzikutin and ikontinct, kruvka and gaberloon remains mysterious, a moon
hidden by wisps of clouds...
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
Your bold commentary on a child's bald head shone at me today while I began
to read again Bend Sinister.
I can hear your chuckle through ventriloquist Olga's words.
Best,Jansy
-----------------------
Hello, Sidsel,
you wrote:
>..."Hyde ... "a hide of land" and "holder of a hide"..."the
personal name appears to be feminine as in 'Ida'" (Dictionary of British
surnames, 1958,164) which would support a homo erotic or even queer
interpretation of what it is Hyde is hiding... I have been wondering if V.N.
cannot be accurate, why would he then pull out the reference? ...it is
almost as saying that "I met him at some party." The information achieved by
this coincidence authorizes Nabokov to put specific interpretations of the
names on the table and take of others (among these the Freudian)."
Reading VN with scholarly help ( recently, news on God's loaded dice), I
confirmed my suspicion that Nabokov wanted to rule over the Freudian
"Unconscious".
In his foreword to Bend Sinister we find a few 'name callings', when he
writes:
"The intruder is not the Viennese Quack...but an anthropomorphic deity
impersonated by me" and then, the fun begins: On BS, chapter one:"While he
was fumbling for the pass they bade him hurry and mentioned a brief love
affair they had had, or would have, or invited him to have with his mother"
.
He goes on: " 'I doubt, said Krug as he went through his pockets, 'whether
those fancies which have bred maggot-like from ancient taboos could be
really transformed into acts - and this for various reasons. Here it is'
( it almost wandered away while he was talking to the orphan - I mean the
nurse)."
Here VN mentions both the swear words "m...f.." together with the Oedipus
complex, plus a bonus of orphans and nurse. A joke that takes us nowhere, it
appears.
BS, in its first chapter, teems with allusions to Pale Fire: here we also
find a gentle gardener, cousin of a dumb guard called Gurk ( Carolyn
informed me the name Jekyll came from a relative of the well known English
gardener, Gertrude Jekyll", who was a friend RLS) recognizably invoked as a
gratuitous, but life-saving generality. The scenery includes a danger of
fathers being shot.
Some Padurogradian hybridization of tongues, from Slavic and "Danish" is
easy to track ( VN himself collaborated in solve these): "donje", for "dont
je", where all is quiet, and "te zankoriv" ( French Mallarmé, again: "dont
j'étais encore ivre") in the context of "fauns". Fighting becoming
'fakhtung/fahtung/flukhtung" in revolving scenes befuzzles me completely.
Tzikutin and ikontinct, kruvka and gaberloon remains mysterious, a moon
hidden by wisps of clouds...
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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