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Re: from ck to Jansy - mandorla & rose/ compass rose of drafts
(The Enchanter)
(The Enchanter)
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from ck to Jansy - mandorla & roseCK: Recently you brought up two subjects that I happen to be interested in - - musical instruments and roses. ...you mentioned a mandorla...I came across the word again today, and it turns out that it is related not to mandolins, but mandeln, almonds. The mandorla turns out to be the almond shaped halo surrounding images of holy personages in Christian iconography.../ ...as an amateur rosarian, I must protest the equation of any circular shape with a rose - - or, as in your Ada quote, an island - - unless of course you detect a reference to the isle of Rhodes.
JM: The word VN created was not "mandorla", but "amorandola".
There are all kinds of roses, sub-rosae, rosaries and rose of the winds and, when I compared Ada's "island of the bed" to a compass- rose, I was thinking of the nautical instruments that carry indications about North/South, Northeast/Southwest forming a cross (or an asterisk), encompassed by a circumference.
Let's get to Nabokov, in "The Enchanter" and to Dmitri's explanation.
(Picador- page 50, l.7): "But when he rushed into the apartment he found her chatting with the charwoman amida a compass rose of drafts."
(Picador - page 123: On a Book Entitled The Enchanter, Dmitri Nabokov)
"Compass rose": "The early Italian nautial compass card, more stylized than today's, and indicating, as compass roses still do, the principal and subsidiary compass points ( which also identified the directions from which winds blew) was called rosa dei venti , "rose of the winds," because of its flowerlike appearance and because wind directions were of paramount concern to navigators; the Italian term survives to this day. A nice fillip is gained in translation ( for a minority of readers perhaps - those who navigate and those who know Italian), since the image refers to drafts coming from various directions through windows opened by the charwoman."
Now, what remains absent here is the reference that links these draughty rooms with another Russian writer's description of a similar cross-shaped arrangement of windows.
A change of subject: Recently I brought up the index card with " a higher plane of consciousness" ( in SO) and Pale Fire's line about a city (Yew), lying "on a higher plane".
In "The Enchanter" there is another, lecherous, meaning added to these words.
(Picador, page 22, l.20): " I now discard all that and ascend to a higher plane.
'What if the way to true bliss is indeed through a still delicate membrane, before it has had time to harden, become overgrown, lose the fragrance and the shimmer through which one penetrates to the throbbing star of that bliss?'."
The Jekyl&Hyde divided soul is already present here. Only a set of lines, now: "Never before, though, had the subordinate clause of his fearsome life been complemented by the principal one, and he walked past with clenched teeth..." (Picador, page 29, pg 6-9)
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JM: The word VN created was not "mandorla", but "amorandola".
There are all kinds of roses, sub-rosae, rosaries and rose of the winds and, when I compared Ada's "island of the bed" to a compass- rose, I was thinking of the nautical instruments that carry indications about North/South, Northeast/Southwest forming a cross (or an asterisk), encompassed by a circumference.
Let's get to Nabokov, in "The Enchanter" and to Dmitri's explanation.
(Picador- page 50, l.7): "But when he rushed into the apartment he found her chatting with the charwoman amida a compass rose of drafts."
(Picador - page 123: On a Book Entitled The Enchanter, Dmitri Nabokov)
"Compass rose": "The early Italian nautial compass card, more stylized than today's, and indicating, as compass roses still do, the principal and subsidiary compass points ( which also identified the directions from which winds blew) was called rosa dei venti , "rose of the winds," because of its flowerlike appearance and because wind directions were of paramount concern to navigators; the Italian term survives to this day. A nice fillip is gained in translation ( for a minority of readers perhaps - those who navigate and those who know Italian), since the image refers to drafts coming from various directions through windows opened by the charwoman."
Now, what remains absent here is the reference that links these draughty rooms with another Russian writer's description of a similar cross-shaped arrangement of windows.
A change of subject: Recently I brought up the index card with " a higher plane of consciousness" ( in SO) and Pale Fire's line about a city (Yew), lying "on a higher plane".
In "The Enchanter" there is another, lecherous, meaning added to these words.
(Picador, page 22, l.20): " I now discard all that and ascend to a higher plane.
'What if the way to true bliss is indeed through a still delicate membrane, before it has had time to harden, become overgrown, lose the fragrance and the shimmer through which one penetrates to the throbbing star of that bliss?'."
The Jekyl&Hyde divided soul is already present here. Only a set of lines, now: "Never before, though, had the subordinate clause of his fearsome life been complemented by the principal one, and he walked past with clenched teeth..." (Picador, page 29, pg 6-9)
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