Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010134, Tue, 27 Jul 2004 20:25:28 -0700

Subject
Re: Introductory notes to TT-6 Comments from John Rea on Akiko
Nakata's notes
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 9:01 PM -0500
From: John A Rea <j.rea2@insightbb.com>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Introductory notes to TT-6 (fwd)


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Akiko Nakata" <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 10:20 PM
> Subject: Introductory notes to TT-6
>

> 17.03-04: One would like in particular to express one's gratitude to
> Harold Hall . . . to our poor friend: the narrator's pronoun. "One" and
> "our" are mingled here. The other "one": One knows, however, that in his
> hometown . . . (17: 23); "we": We have here a banal case of protracted
> erotic itch . . . (17:26-27); "our": . . . our Person's whore . . .
> (18.23-24), . . . and our acrophobic Person . . . (19.14).

It may or may not be interesting to remind ourselves that in casual style
in French the normal pronoun for the second person plural is
"on" = English "one". This permits a nearly invariable verb:
Thus "je parl, tu parl, il parl, on parl (vous parlez?) il parl" in
pronunciation.


> 17.04: Harold Hall: Another HH (Humbert Humbert) name. HH is also a
> variation of the title TT and the other alliterations we find dispersing
> in the
> novel .

One may even be led to think of "Harold Haze". In Nabokoviana I seem
to have seen both "VV" and, mirabile dictu, a billingually
ambiguous "BB" !
> .
> 20). Othello also echoes here.
>
I also feel vibrations from "Fall of the House of Usher" in the last
long paragraph of the chapter:

note: dark corner...descending...desolate...dismal...distant

"too dim to illumine....

"descending towards the invisible lake"

I note also in the preceding paragraph another transparent thing,
"her voluminous [contains "luminous"] handbag, there SHOWS THROUGH
[my emphasis] that bag, as it were, the first page of the Faust
affair with the energetic erasures and ... insertions."

John





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D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L