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Cinderela & Hazel: next ride on a merry-go-round
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Dear List,
While I was checking one of the versions of Cinderella in German I discovered that in it she didn't have a fairy godmother and references to the more familiar kinds of metamorphosis ( pumpkin and mice) were gone. Nevertheless, gifts and wonderful dresses were bestowed on her by a white bird that was hiding among the branches of a magic Hazelnut-tree.
We know how fond VN was of the transformations undergone by the pumpkin ( the first mention I found came from his biography of Gogol and it was faintly echoed in "Ada", when Van's car became a coach and a horse ) and I suppose VN's acquaintance with fairy-stories must have come through his readings in French ( such as Perrault's register and not Grimm's). Still, I thought it would be worth mentioning it here, as well as the information that Hazel also makes an indirect appearance in the story of the "Nutcracker" - if we get to it in its French title : "Le Casse-Noisettes", since I understand that "noisettes" mean "hazel nuts" ( another link with Pnin and squirrels?).
I also remembered that the plot for Quilty's "The Enchanted Hunters" centers around the same mechanism that gives a special meaning to the brown shoe Shade finds in the garden, when what is inside and what is outside, or, when "reality" and dream, are blended into one.
As A.Appel Jr. notes, by using the tactics of "involution", Nabokov created a story within the story and transported his characters from one novel to another. However, although traversing contiguous worlds, Appel maintains that VN never doubted that, in the very center of them all, there was a Poet - as the one who invented the play The Enchanted Hunter. [And yet, we find Humbert Humbert's observations tinged with irony when he describes the play's "profound message, namely, that mirage and reality merge in love" ( chapter 13, part Two), i.e, when the Poet becomes a fiction within a fiction.].
Jansy
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While I was checking one of the versions of Cinderella in German I discovered that in it she didn't have a fairy godmother and references to the more familiar kinds of metamorphosis ( pumpkin and mice) were gone. Nevertheless, gifts and wonderful dresses were bestowed on her by a white bird that was hiding among the branches of a magic Hazelnut-tree.
We know how fond VN was of the transformations undergone by the pumpkin ( the first mention I found came from his biography of Gogol and it was faintly echoed in "Ada", when Van's car became a coach and a horse ) and I suppose VN's acquaintance with fairy-stories must have come through his readings in French ( such as Perrault's register and not Grimm's). Still, I thought it would be worth mentioning it here, as well as the information that Hazel also makes an indirect appearance in the story of the "Nutcracker" - if we get to it in its French title : "Le Casse-Noisettes", since I understand that "noisettes" mean "hazel nuts" ( another link with Pnin and squirrels?).
I also remembered that the plot for Quilty's "The Enchanted Hunters" centers around the same mechanism that gives a special meaning to the brown shoe Shade finds in the garden, when what is inside and what is outside, or, when "reality" and dream, are blended into one.
As A.Appel Jr. notes, by using the tactics of "involution", Nabokov created a story within the story and transported his characters from one novel to another. However, although traversing contiguous worlds, Appel maintains that VN never doubted that, in the very center of them all, there was a Poet - as the one who invented the play The Enchanted Hunter. [And yet, we find Humbert Humbert's observations tinged with irony when he describes the play's "profound message, namely, that mirage and reality merge in love" ( chapter 13, part Two), i.e, when the Poet becomes a fiction within a fiction.].
Jansy
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