Subject
Re: April in Arizona and popular songs
From
Date
Body
April in Arizona and popular songsSES: In order to understand Nabokov's relationship with America, we should look again at his proud declaration that he was "as American as April in Arizona." This remark was not merely rhetorical, despite the artfulness of its alliteration and its apparent allusion to the popular song "April in Paris."
CK: I also "hear" a reference to another popular song here - - from South Pacific's "A Wonderful Guy": I'm as corny as Kansas in August, high as the flag on the Fourth of July. But the "April in Paris" possibility is interesting too.
JM: Thank you, SES and Carolyn. I had always linked the expression VN used, with its lovely blend of alliterations, not with a song but with a slogan "As American as an apple-pie". This led me to a figurative dead-end because VN's lines mentioned only natural things: landscape, seasons, butterflies and not ( even if just a pie) man-made objects or words. The association of his lines and music makes all the difference for me.
Also CK's information (I had the pleasure of hearing a duet of viole d'amore years ago...distinguished by two sets of strings, one to be played, the other to vibrate sympathetically) opens our "ear" to another kind of reverberative sympathy for VN's neologism ( I think he might have ignored the word existed in Tzech.), although the context, in my eyes, suggests some kind of military "skotomized" sentimentality, not the curious correspondence between sets of strings.
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
CK: I also "hear" a reference to another popular song here - - from South Pacific's "A Wonderful Guy": I'm as corny as Kansas in August, high as the flag on the Fourth of July. But the "April in Paris" possibility is interesting too.
JM: Thank you, SES and Carolyn. I had always linked the expression VN used, with its lovely blend of alliterations, not with a song but with a slogan "As American as an apple-pie". This led me to a figurative dead-end because VN's lines mentioned only natural things: landscape, seasons, butterflies and not ( even if just a pie) man-made objects or words. The association of his lines and music makes all the difference for me.
Also CK's information (I had the pleasure of hearing a duet of viole d'amore years ago...distinguished by two sets of strings, one to be played, the other to vibrate sympathetically) opens our "ear" to another kind of reverberative sympathy for VN's neologism ( I think he might have ignored the word existed in Tzech.), although the context, in my eyes, suggests some kind of military "skotomized" sentimentality, not the curious correspondence between sets of strings.
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