Subject
Cunning Stunts, "Oh, Calcutta" and other stuff (fwd)
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> ===== Original Message From naiman <naiman@socrates.Berkeley.EDU> =====
The Oh! Calcutta! gloss is wonderful -- with its explanation of "Edenic" --
but we should not neglect Nabokov's transformation of the play's title -- a
shuttling from the anal to the genital. (Is this what is meant by AVANT
garde?) The play's title announces a theme that will be picked up again in
the next chapter, with the explicit pictures of Armande, her impuberal
softness and its middle line, and the shot of her spreading wide "the lovely
legs of a giantess." Later we learn about her "crack lovers" who have
enjoyed full conjunction in the course of three trips.
The promiscuity (R's preoccupation?) of the novel's leading ladies
requires some kind of interpretive treatment. There is a nod to Lolita in
the scene from ch. 17 describing Hugh's and Armande's unusual ritual of
copulation; note that here it is as if Lolita is forcing Humbert to pretend
that nothing is going on (he has to hide the preparations, pretend this is
just sofa-talk). The ref. to their being on stage is a nod back to the way
Humbert sets the scene in that chapter. Julia, too, is sexually oriented --
the adjective in the not very hidden unscrambled title of the play -
stunning -- may be echoed when Julia discusses how she wishes to dazzle
some people in Moscow. What else is on that list of "darling words"
supplied by Armande?
How many other obscenities are in similar near view? John Rea has
mentioned Mr. Pines. The following lines seem particularly suggestive:
"He lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
"Yes at Diablonnet, near Versex."
"Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees':
yabloni." The presence of VerSEX may trigger a different Russian word that
sounds like yabloni, common in many vulgar expressions. Perhaps an
additional step (downwards) are the apple trees (with their Edenic
associations and results). Here, I am aware I may be moving out on a limb,
but Armande Chamar's very name has genital associations (Russian/German) if
we see it as two mirrored equivalents framed by two "ar"s.
Nabokov has used Scham before -- openly in Bend Sinister and, I would argue,
in Pnin. I cannot recall other instances of similar play with a "mand"
syllable. Armande's being of both Belgian and Russian origin (with Hugh
guessing two Germanic possibilities) might be relevant. Not as clear a case
as that of the Russified Frenchman Konstantin Chateau, but the theme is
there.
Is this better than the jock talk of the fashionable writers R.
criticizes? Is our task of readers akin to that of the humble proofreaders
who bring obscenities to the surface? Yet this may be a necessary part of
reaching the moment "where the orgasm of art courses through the whole
spine with incomparably more foce than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical
panic." (p.102
Yet one more comment on fit. The final page of the book returns us to
the image of a box "grown completely transparent and hollow." We should
recall the box with "Fit" when we read the following line: "This is, I
believe, IT (italicized); not the crude anguish of physical death but the
incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass fro
mone state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it, son". Is the
final maneuver akin to a proofreader's, replacing fit with it?
And -- to return to the crudeness with which we began -- a word which
appears with strange frequency in TT is stuff (stuffiness 19; Armande
"demanded hard realistic stuff reflecting our age" (books about Violence and
Oriental Wisdom"; the muzzled stuff 31; same stuff 32; Neo buddhism and all
that stuff 60; really wonderful stuff 76 (ostensibly about R's work but
perhaps about the debauching of Julia, several of these uses are sexually
suggestive); I can't recall VN using this word so
often elsewhere; indeed, it seems like the mark of laziness, and perhaps it
is a marker of R's laziness in writing? This is a highly vague and
unnecessary word -- its repeated use by VN may be a way of distinguishing
his narrator from the other American writer residing in Switzerland.
Eric
PS While we are on ch. 11, note the way that the mock-arson subverting or
supporting Cunning Stunts hints at the real arson at the book's end, when
Hugh is also expecting a sexual encounter. Of course, nearly every
chapter looks forward to that one, but the link here seems especially
direct.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
> ===== Original Message From naiman <naiman@socrates.Berkeley.EDU> =====
The Oh! Calcutta! gloss is wonderful -- with its explanation of "Edenic" --
but we should not neglect Nabokov's transformation of the play's title -- a
shuttling from the anal to the genital. (Is this what is meant by AVANT
garde?) The play's title announces a theme that will be picked up again in
the next chapter, with the explicit pictures of Armande, her impuberal
softness and its middle line, and the shot of her spreading wide "the lovely
legs of a giantess." Later we learn about her "crack lovers" who have
enjoyed full conjunction in the course of three trips.
The promiscuity (R's preoccupation?) of the novel's leading ladies
requires some kind of interpretive treatment. There is a nod to Lolita in
the scene from ch. 17 describing Hugh's and Armande's unusual ritual of
copulation; note that here it is as if Lolita is forcing Humbert to pretend
that nothing is going on (he has to hide the preparations, pretend this is
just sofa-talk). The ref. to their being on stage is a nod back to the way
Humbert sets the scene in that chapter. Julia, too, is sexually oriented --
the adjective in the not very hidden unscrambled title of the play -
stunning -- may be echoed when Julia discusses how she wishes to dazzle
some people in Moscow. What else is on that list of "darling words"
supplied by Armande?
How many other obscenities are in similar near view? John Rea has
mentioned Mr. Pines. The following lines seem particularly suggestive:
"He lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
"Yes at Diablonnet, near Versex."
"Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees':
yabloni." The presence of VerSEX may trigger a different Russian word that
sounds like yabloni, common in many vulgar expressions. Perhaps an
additional step (downwards) are the apple trees (with their Edenic
associations and results). Here, I am aware I may be moving out on a limb,
but Armande Chamar's very name has genital associations (Russian/German) if
we see it as two mirrored equivalents framed by two "ar"s.
Nabokov has used Scham before -- openly in Bend Sinister and, I would argue,
in Pnin. I cannot recall other instances of similar play with a "mand"
syllable. Armande's being of both Belgian and Russian origin (with Hugh
guessing two Germanic possibilities) might be relevant. Not as clear a case
as that of the Russified Frenchman Konstantin Chateau, but the theme is
there.
Is this better than the jock talk of the fashionable writers R.
criticizes? Is our task of readers akin to that of the humble proofreaders
who bring obscenities to the surface? Yet this may be a necessary part of
reaching the moment "where the orgasm of art courses through the whole
spine with incomparably more foce than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical
panic." (p.102
Yet one more comment on fit. The final page of the book returns us to
the image of a box "grown completely transparent and hollow." We should
recall the box with "Fit" when we read the following line: "This is, I
believe, IT (italicized); not the crude anguish of physical death but the
incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass fro
mone state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it, son". Is the
final maneuver akin to a proofreader's, replacing fit with it?
And -- to return to the crudeness with which we began -- a word which
appears with strange frequency in TT is stuff (stuffiness 19; Armande
"demanded hard realistic stuff reflecting our age" (books about Violence and
Oriental Wisdom"; the muzzled stuff 31; same stuff 32; Neo buddhism and all
that stuff 60; really wonderful stuff 76 (ostensibly about R's work but
perhaps about the debauching of Julia, several of these uses are sexually
suggestive); I can't recall VN using this word so
often elsewhere; indeed, it seems like the mark of laziness, and perhaps it
is a marker of R's laziness in writing? This is a highly vague and
unnecessary word -- its repeated use by VN may be a way of distinguishing
his narrator from the other American writer residing in Switzerland.
Eric
PS While we are on ch. 11, note the way that the mock-arson subverting or
supporting Cunning Stunts hints at the real arson at the book's end, when
Hugh is also expecting a sexual encounter. Of course, nearly every
chapter looks forward to that one, but the link here seems especially
direct.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L