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Fwd: melons and watermelons
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 10:20:39 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Subject: melons and watermelons
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
When Nabokov, in his biography of Nikolai Gogol mentioned Gogol´s metamorphic
creations, where an unnamed vehicle began to take a definite shape only on its
arrival while during its course it was described as "looking like a
watermelon", Nabokov himself wrote that he was going to "stretch" the image of
the watermelon-coach to include Cinderella´s pumpkin carriage ( I won´t be
quoting because my copy of VN´s Gogol is not in English!).
In ADA, Van began his return trip to school in a car driven by Bouteillan but he
soon made a stop for a good-bye kiss with Ada. After he returned to Forest Fork
he galloped off on his favorite horse, Morio. We all remember that the theme
of pumpkin coaches often arises in "Ada" in connection to Blanche but at this
moment we encounter Van "stumbling on melons".
Brian Boyd ( Nabokov´s Ada, page 22) elaborated on the disappearance of the
family car driven by Bouteillan and he compared it to a second metamorphic trip
which had taken place three months earlier. The sentence that describes the
change from the family car into a black horse begins with a line from Marvell´s
poem "The Garden", which shall later be used when the couple changes their 1884
code into a new one in 1886 where we find Van also "stumbling on melons".
Stumbling on melons. is it not VN himself showing himself as the enchanter,
changing Gogol´s and Marvel´s melons into pumpkins and then into hidden codes?
When B. Boyd described this "bland imposture" ( in reference to the metamorphic
coach trips) he mentioned Stern and Barthelme, but he only introduced Gogol
in his next chapter when he described Gogol´s talent for autonomous creations (
see Boyd in "Nabokov´s Ada: the place of consciousness).
Could this be another of Nabokov´s serendipitous finds when he stumbled on
Gogol´s watermelons ( we must remember how important the simple word "water"
is in "Ada", already begining with the connection with the Veen ancestry, where
the "aquamarine" theme arises in relation to the bluest seas ) and then goes on
to include a line from Marvell´s "melons" ( from where the word "water" is
absent ) and choses it as a code for Van and Ada´s passionate correspondence?
It seems to me that whereas Gogol´s verbal metamorphic voyages can still be
identified by his reference to an external "object" ( such as a coach, caleche,
britshka ) Nabokov´s own explorations exclude this imaginary object to have
words themselves traveling metamorphically?
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----