NABOKV-L post 0011368, Fri, 22 Apr 2005 05:13:30 -0700

EDNOTE. Whatever else VN may have had in mind, "Peter de Rast"
is certainly a play on "pederast". I seem to recall a "bare-shouldered" lad
that King Kinbote encounters on his escape from Nova Zembla,
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----- Forwarded message from pstock@brandeis.edu -----
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:04:06 -0400
From: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
Reply-To: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
Subject: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"
To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
I don’t know about real-life Peters de Rast. And I hope that I haven’t
somehow missed what follows in a previous post. But given the passage’s
mixing of sex and childhood, doesn’t Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast, for
democratic Netherlanders) suggest “pederast”? This would link to the lad’s
bare shoulder. This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we
recall the marked emphasis in HH’s pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided
childhood--as opposed to the more commonplace interpretations of this crime,
which arguably are concerned more with tarring and feathering the pederast
than with comprehending the effect on the victim. Meanwhile, Lucette looks
on . . . .

Humbly submitted,

David Powelstock



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From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf
Of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"



Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,

Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can be. I
saw Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the "hunted
enchanters" inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was not
in his screen-play.

Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a reference to
a Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov
himself, who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but still
strong old oak".
Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast...)

In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum "rake"
from "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing. Google
took me to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes. In
it there was Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn, een
toonladder (makam) in de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.

I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the Curds, to
the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".

I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the reference
is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what of
the four cows and the lad in rags?

"as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder
bare"

Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called Peter de
Rast? The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is
produced by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.

Jansy



_____

I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In
Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the hotel is
called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey but (as
far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose idea
it was?

Anthony Stadlen

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