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Fwd: Re: Re: ADA's mulberry
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Date
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Dear Brian Boyd and List,
A wonderful contribution on "Here we go round the Mulberry bush" extending
from Cambridge´s Milton Mulberry, to Bosch and berries, even reaching Lolita
and a kind of moth.
You may be right, the "morning toilet" version of the "round the mulberry
song" that would add a special meaning to the "mulberry soap" is at least
sixty years old. I thought it was the established one but I now discovered
that it is simply an American variation taught in Kindergarten. The text
offered in the "Mother Goose" collection emphasizes house-cleaning and going
to church.
And yet, VN could have enjoyed this secondary "diastemic" ressonance, even
while more seriously directing us to Bosch and Paradise Lost.
Just as I always think of the name "ADA" as graphically creating a tryptic
but this has the effect of a rather private image that comes in contrast to
VN´s distribution of the sizes of Ada´s chapters by which he recreates in ud
the sensation of a longer distended period of time during childhood and its
subsequent shortening ( Van acknowledged this experience in Ch. 4 )
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: ADA's mulberry
Dear Jansy and List,
I should have written "vulva" rather than "vagina." (It is already corrected
on
the version to be uploaded for ADAonline.) My apologies, I'm very much an
amateur gynecologist, he admitted blushingly (rest of sentence deleted--ED).
As for the mulberry: Jansy could be right, although there is also another
reason, perhaps. In I.9 there occurs the first open parody of the Fall in
Ardis's paradise, and the first appearance of the mulberry-colored soap. The
chapter ends:
A fat snake of porcelain curled around the basin, and as both the reptile
and he
stopped to watch Eve and the soft woggle of her bud-breasts in profile, a
big
mulberry-colored cake of soap slithered out of her hand, and her
black-socked
foot hooked the door shut with a bang which was more the echo of the soap's
crashing against the marble board than a sign of pudic displeasure.
This alludes playfully to the groaning echo that sounds around the world
when
the serpent succeeds in persuading Eve to take her first bite of the apple,
in
Milton's account of the Fall (PL IX). Now the mulberry echoes the
proliferation
of berries and other fruit in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, central
panel,
with all its rampant sexuality and its amused echoes of the Fall; but I
think it
also echoes the fact that in Cambridge, there is a mulberry tree that is
known
as "Milton's mulberry," and popularly supposed to have been planted by him.
Nabokov of course was also a student at Cambridge.
VN knew "Here we go round the mulberry bush," which he echoes weirdly and
wonderfully in Lolita II.26: " 'going round and round,' as she [Rita]
phrased
it, 'like a God-damn mulberry moth'" although he glosses it in Appel's note
as
"the maypole song" and not a morning bathtime song-which is new to me too,
and
is not in the Opies' Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, but may have been
current a long time nevertheless.
Brian Boyd
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thu 2/17/2005 4:26 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fw: Ada mulberry
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 18:17:12 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Dear List and Brian Boyd,
...........................................................
Extract from Ada I-23:
The liquid prison was now ready and an alarm clock given a full quarter of
an
hour to live.
'Let her soak first, you'll soap her afterwards,' said Van feverishly.
'Yes, yes, yes,' cried Ada.
'I'm Van,' said Lucette, standing in the tub with the mulberry soap between
her
legs and protruding her shiny tummy.
'You'll turn into a boy if you do that,' said Ada sternly, 'and that won't
be
very amusing.'
Warily, the little girl started to sink her buttocks in the water.
'Too hot,' she said, 'much too horribly hot!'
'It'll cool,' said Ada, 'plop down and relax. Here's your doll.'
...........................................
Brian Boyd ( The Nabokovian, 53, Fall 2004 ) in his afternote on page 74
wrote
:
'Lucette´s next brush with Van and Ada making love, the next day, involver
her
in a bath with her 'fetus-sized rubber doll", in pointed echo of Aqua´s
"fetus...of rubber...produced in her bath." After Aqua´s delivery, Marina´s
son is brought as a substitute and registered as her son Ivan Veen. And in
I.23, standing up in her bath, Lucette lodges a cake of mulberry soap in her
vagina, and declares " I´m Van," as if another substitute Van '.
I would like to comment about the suggestion that "Lucette lodges a cake of
mulberry soap in her vagina", as if the child were attempting to mimic a
penetration. In my opinion VN´s sentence: " with the mulberry soap between
her
legs and protruding her shiny tummy..." emphasizes Lucette´s childishness
and
innocence while it describes her attempt to imagine herself with that
wonderful
appendix, a pinkish and purple male member like Van´s.
I don´t think she would have been able at that tender age to register
anything
further than the fascinating discovery about a boy´s (Van´s) penis.
This observation doesn´t mean to contradict in any way Brian Boyd´s very
striking parallel bt. Lucette playing with a rubber doll in her bath and
Aqua´s
delivery of a dead baby who was then exchanged by little Van. My intention
is
solely to emphasize Lucette´s protuding tummy and her simple perplexity
after
seeing a male erection.
We know that VN never added details at random and I think that his choice
for
"mulberry soap" must have been motivated not only by the color but because
of a
very common children´s song that is used to teach little kids to wash
themselves
( and this particular song came to my attention when I realized that
Elizabeth
Taylor in the movie "Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf" was not singing to
Disney´s " Who is afraid of the big bad Woolf" tone but humming "here we go
round the mulberry bush")
>From the internet I got: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush for a song
about
daily routines and getting dressed. Have your child make the appropriate
motions while singing each verse of this song:
This is the way I wash my face, wash my face, wash my face.
This is the way I wash my face, so early in the morning.
This is the way I brush my teeth, brush my teeth, brush my teeth.
This is the way I brush my teeth, so early in the morning.
(Your child can add other verses and motions.)
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
A wonderful contribution on "Here we go round the Mulberry bush" extending
from Cambridge´s Milton Mulberry, to Bosch and berries, even reaching Lolita
and a kind of moth.
You may be right, the "morning toilet" version of the "round the mulberry
song" that would add a special meaning to the "mulberry soap" is at least
sixty years old. I thought it was the established one but I now discovered
that it is simply an American variation taught in Kindergarten. The text
offered in the "Mother Goose" collection emphasizes house-cleaning and going
to church.
And yet, VN could have enjoyed this secondary "diastemic" ressonance, even
while more seriously directing us to Bosch and Paradise Lost.
Just as I always think of the name "ADA" as graphically creating a tryptic
but this has the effect of a rather private image that comes in contrast to
VN´s distribution of the sizes of Ada´s chapters by which he recreates in ud
the sensation of a longer distended period of time during childhood and its
subsequent shortening ( Van acknowledged this experience in Ch. 4 )
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: ADA's mulberry
Dear Jansy and List,
I should have written "vulva" rather than "vagina." (It is already corrected
on
the version to be uploaded for ADAonline.) My apologies, I'm very much an
amateur gynecologist, he admitted blushingly (rest of sentence deleted--ED).
As for the mulberry: Jansy could be right, although there is also another
reason, perhaps. In I.9 there occurs the first open parody of the Fall in
Ardis's paradise, and the first appearance of the mulberry-colored soap. The
chapter ends:
A fat snake of porcelain curled around the basin, and as both the reptile
and he
stopped to watch Eve and the soft woggle of her bud-breasts in profile, a
big
mulberry-colored cake of soap slithered out of her hand, and her
black-socked
foot hooked the door shut with a bang which was more the echo of the soap's
crashing against the marble board than a sign of pudic displeasure.
This alludes playfully to the groaning echo that sounds around the world
when
the serpent succeeds in persuading Eve to take her first bite of the apple,
in
Milton's account of the Fall (PL IX). Now the mulberry echoes the
proliferation
of berries and other fruit in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, central
panel,
with all its rampant sexuality and its amused echoes of the Fall; but I
think it
also echoes the fact that in Cambridge, there is a mulberry tree that is
known
as "Milton's mulberry," and popularly supposed to have been planted by him.
Nabokov of course was also a student at Cambridge.
VN knew "Here we go round the mulberry bush," which he echoes weirdly and
wonderfully in Lolita II.26: " 'going round and round,' as she [Rita]
phrased
it, 'like a God-damn mulberry moth'" although he glosses it in Appel's note
as
"the maypole song" and not a morning bathtime song-which is new to me too,
and
is not in the Opies' Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, but may have been
current a long time nevertheless.
Brian Boyd
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thu 2/17/2005 4:26 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fw: Ada mulberry
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 18:17:12 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Dear List and Brian Boyd,
...........................................................
Extract from Ada I-23:
The liquid prison was now ready and an alarm clock given a full quarter of
an
hour to live.
'Let her soak first, you'll soap her afterwards,' said Van feverishly.
'Yes, yes, yes,' cried Ada.
'I'm Van,' said Lucette, standing in the tub with the mulberry soap between
her
legs and protruding her shiny tummy.
'You'll turn into a boy if you do that,' said Ada sternly, 'and that won't
be
very amusing.'
Warily, the little girl started to sink her buttocks in the water.
'Too hot,' she said, 'much too horribly hot!'
'It'll cool,' said Ada, 'plop down and relax. Here's your doll.'
...........................................
Brian Boyd ( The Nabokovian, 53, Fall 2004 ) in his afternote on page 74
wrote
:
'Lucette´s next brush with Van and Ada making love, the next day, involver
her
in a bath with her 'fetus-sized rubber doll", in pointed echo of Aqua´s
"fetus...of rubber...produced in her bath." After Aqua´s delivery, Marina´s
son is brought as a substitute and registered as her son Ivan Veen. And in
I.23, standing up in her bath, Lucette lodges a cake of mulberry soap in her
vagina, and declares " I´m Van," as if another substitute Van '.
I would like to comment about the suggestion that "Lucette lodges a cake of
mulberry soap in her vagina", as if the child were attempting to mimic a
penetration. In my opinion VN´s sentence: " with the mulberry soap between
her
legs and protruding her shiny tummy..." emphasizes Lucette´s childishness
and
innocence while it describes her attempt to imagine herself with that
wonderful
appendix, a pinkish and purple male member like Van´s.
I don´t think she would have been able at that tender age to register
anything
further than the fascinating discovery about a boy´s (Van´s) penis.
This observation doesn´t mean to contradict in any way Brian Boyd´s very
striking parallel bt. Lucette playing with a rubber doll in her bath and
Aqua´s
delivery of a dead baby who was then exchanged by little Van. My intention
is
solely to emphasize Lucette´s protuding tummy and her simple perplexity
after
seeing a male erection.
We know that VN never added details at random and I think that his choice
for
"mulberry soap" must have been motivated not only by the color but because
of a
very common children´s song that is used to teach little kids to wash
themselves
( and this particular song came to my attention when I realized that
Elizabeth
Taylor in the movie "Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf" was not singing to
Disney´s " Who is afraid of the big bad Woolf" tone but humming "here we go
round the mulberry bush")
>From the internet I got: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush for a song
about
daily routines and getting dressed. Have your child make the appropriate
motions while singing each verse of this song:
This is the way I wash my face, wash my face, wash my face.
This is the way I wash my face, so early in the morning.
This is the way I brush my teeth, brush my teeth, brush my teeth.
This is the way I brush my teeth, so early in the morning.
(Your child can add other verses and motions.)
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----