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Re: SS: literature shaping reality]
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Sergei asked: VN liked the idea that literary fiction sometimes shapes the
reality - for example, the plot of "Revizor" by Gogol reproduced ironically
by Lopatin (a revolutionary) trying to liberate Chernyshevsky.
Did anybody notice strange similarity between Andronnikov and Niagarin in
Pale Fire and the personages of a real story...
Jansy Mello: SS, "Literary fiction sometimes shapes the reality" but it may also happen that with one added twist, it is mirrored back in fiction.
What do you make of this observation of VN on French novelists? In KQK Martha " would wear bed slippers with crimson pompoms. This pair of slippers ( his modest but considerate gift) our lovers kept in the lower drawer of the corner chest, for life not unfrequently imitates the French novelists".
Several pages later (page 831) we find Franz asking: 'No pompons today?' She did not hear the sweet euphemism.. "I'm closed for repairs today' ( another sweet euphemism)
The rendering is curious: where are "crimson pompons", or slippers hidden in a corner chest, found in a French novel? VN's reference to "pompom" as an euphemism for menses and their color ( crimson) made me think about A. Dumas novel about a Dame with red or white camelias...Could this interpretation be correct?
VN also describes a character's pudgy hand with rings: Piffke wore "a second-rate diamond on his plump auricular" (page 792). The idea of the auricular is quite good. The finger where wedding-bands and rings are worn is ccalled "the annular" ( for Lat. "anulus":ring). The "auricular" must refer to the index when it is often used to scratch the ears, but it also carries a reference to the heart ( auricles and ventricles) and to gold.
In Pale Fire Hazel holds a "stang" when riding in a bus. Franz sits in the subway and watches the "shiny stangs" (778). Is this a common word in English? I couldn't find it in the COD, nor in other modest dictionaires. I remember it from the German, though, "Stange" as a...perch!
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reality - for example, the plot of "Revizor" by Gogol reproduced ironically
by Lopatin (a revolutionary) trying to liberate Chernyshevsky.
Did anybody notice strange similarity between Andronnikov and Niagarin in
Pale Fire and the personages of a real story...
Jansy Mello: SS, "Literary fiction sometimes shapes the reality" but it may also happen that with one added twist, it is mirrored back in fiction.
What do you make of this observation of VN on French novelists? In KQK Martha " would wear bed slippers with crimson pompoms. This pair of slippers ( his modest but considerate gift) our lovers kept in the lower drawer of the corner chest, for life not unfrequently imitates the French novelists".
Several pages later (page 831) we find Franz asking: 'No pompons today?' She did not hear the sweet euphemism.. "I'm closed for repairs today' ( another sweet euphemism)
The rendering is curious: where are "crimson pompons", or slippers hidden in a corner chest, found in a French novel? VN's reference to "pompom" as an euphemism for menses and their color ( crimson) made me think about A. Dumas novel about a Dame with red or white camelias...Could this interpretation be correct?
VN also describes a character's pudgy hand with rings: Piffke wore "a second-rate diamond on his plump auricular" (page 792). The idea of the auricular is quite good. The finger where wedding-bands and rings are worn is ccalled "the annular" ( for Lat. "anulus":ring). The "auricular" must refer to the index when it is often used to scratch the ears, but it also carries a reference to the heart ( auricles and ventricles) and to gold.
In Pale Fire Hazel holds a "stang" when riding in a bus. Franz sits in the subway and watches the "shiny stangs" (778). Is this a common word in English? I couldn't find it in the COD, nor in other modest dictionaires. I remember it from the German, though, "Stange" as a...perch!
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