Subject
TT-9 Introductory Notes (fwd)
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Date
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---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, August 05, 2004 12:28 PM +0900
From: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: TT-9 Introductory Notes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Akiko Nakata" <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 11:50 AM
Subject: TT-9 Introductory Notes
25.02: between Thur and Versex: The Rhine has a tributary, the Thur, but I
could not find Versex. In the next chapter, HP meets Mr. R. at the Versex
Palace Hotel that is "venerable" like the Montreux Palace Hotel, where VN
lived in 60s and 70s.
--------------------------------------
EDNOTE. My Swiss Michelin Guide lists neither as a town.
-------------------------------------
25.15: She wore a black suit over a frilly blouse: Another fair beauty in
black.
26.06: *Figures in a Golden Window*: together with the more obvious *The
Burning Window,* suggests HP's death in fire. The other fire motifs: "the
flame-and-soot paperback," "June sets her new dollhouse on fire and the
whole villa burns down," "the silhouette of human panic in the blazing
windows," "I may mount sur mon bucher." See Don's Garland paper.
26.20: June: Another "J" name.
26.26: Paul Plam: Another alliterative name. Plam makes another fire motif.
As Don has pointed out, "plamya" is "flame" in Russian.
26.30: Drakonita: The first dragon image. Cf. "A fairy-tale element seemed
to imbue with its Gothic rose water all attempts to scale the battlements
of her Dragon" (Ch. 14).
27.02: Tessin: VN mentions as one of the good spots for butterfly hunting in
a 1972 interview. See SO p.199.
27.09: Danish or Dutch: They seem to have been chosen for alliteration. Cf.
Cuba and China (28.20)
27.28-29: lovely wake of the sun through semitransparent black fabric: I was
not aware
of it, but Tadashi Wakashima pointed it out
that HP could see Armande through her black skirt until she asked him to
pull the blind down. "The low sun's funeral" refers to HP's "sorrow" too.
27.35-28.02: I have evolved on the playing courts of my father's school a
devastating return of service--a cut clinging drive: "The Person Stroke,"
about which we will be reading in detail in Ch. 16.
28.11-12: I can levitate one inch high and keep it up for ten seconds:
refers to a spiritual phenomenon?
----------------------
EDNOTE. I suspect this whole passage reflects HP's amorous delirium after
being bewitched by Armande.
--------------------------------------------
28.24-26: Could not understand why I called Mrs. R.'s left-wingism a
commonplace bourgeois vogue. Mais au contraire, she and her daughter adore
radicals!: Such left-winged bourgeois can be found in, say, *La Chinoise*
(1967) by Jean-Luc Godard. I have no idea whether or not VN watched the
Godard films
in 60s
and early 70s, but Julia in Ch. 11 looks not unlike Anne Wiazemsky, the
"Chinoise." Cuba (of Castro) and China (of Mao) are the places such
people would be most interested in.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Date: Thursday, August 05, 2004 12:28 PM +0900
From: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: TT-9 Introductory Notes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Akiko Nakata" <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 11:50 AM
Subject: TT-9 Introductory Notes
25.02: between Thur and Versex: The Rhine has a tributary, the Thur, but I
could not find Versex. In the next chapter, HP meets Mr. R. at the Versex
Palace Hotel that is "venerable" like the Montreux Palace Hotel, where VN
lived in 60s and 70s.
--------------------------------------
EDNOTE. My Swiss Michelin Guide lists neither as a town.
-------------------------------------
25.15: She wore a black suit over a frilly blouse: Another fair beauty in
black.
26.06: *Figures in a Golden Window*: together with the more obvious *The
Burning Window,* suggests HP's death in fire. The other fire motifs: "the
flame-and-soot paperback," "June sets her new dollhouse on fire and the
whole villa burns down," "the silhouette of human panic in the blazing
windows," "I may mount sur mon bucher." See Don's Garland paper.
26.20: June: Another "J" name.
26.26: Paul Plam: Another alliterative name. Plam makes another fire motif.
As Don has pointed out, "plamya" is "flame" in Russian.
26.30: Drakonita: The first dragon image. Cf. "A fairy-tale element seemed
to imbue with its Gothic rose water all attempts to scale the battlements
of her Dragon" (Ch. 14).
27.02: Tessin: VN mentions as one of the good spots for butterfly hunting in
a 1972 interview. See SO p.199.
27.09: Danish or Dutch: They seem to have been chosen for alliteration. Cf.
Cuba and China (28.20)
27.28-29: lovely wake of the sun through semitransparent black fabric: I was
not aware
of it, but Tadashi Wakashima pointed it out
that HP could see Armande through her black skirt until she asked him to
pull the blind down. "The low sun's funeral" refers to HP's "sorrow" too.
27.35-28.02: I have evolved on the playing courts of my father's school a
devastating return of service--a cut clinging drive: "The Person Stroke,"
about which we will be reading in detail in Ch. 16.
28.11-12: I can levitate one inch high and keep it up for ten seconds:
refers to a spiritual phenomenon?
----------------------
EDNOTE. I suspect this whole passage reflects HP's amorous delirium after
being bewitched by Armande.
--------------------------------------------
28.24-26: Could not understand why I called Mrs. R.'s left-wingism a
commonplace bourgeois vogue. Mais au contraire, she and her daughter adore
radicals!: Such left-winged bourgeois can be found in, say, *La Chinoise*
(1967) by Jean-Luc Godard. I have no idea whether or not VN watched the
Godard films
in 60s
and early 70s, but Julia in Ch. 11 looks not unlike Anne Wiazemsky, the
"Chinoise." Cuba (of Castro) and China (of Mao) are the places such
people would be most interested in.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L