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Re: Fwd: Re: Nabokov's imagery
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Hello, Don
"Tropes are the dreams of speech" ( VN-Ada, page 328)
and, while I was leafing and "leavesdropping" thru Ada, to select special
"VN´s imagery" I came across my pencil marks on Nabokov´s tactic of making
sounds double over themselves to reappear with slight variations several
pages later ( " something of the sort had happened somewhere before"...)
page 164: She was not really reading (...) if she picked up a book, would at
once get engrossed in whatever text she happened to slip into 'from the
book´s brink' with the natural movement of a water creature put back into
its brook".
pages210/11 "As they crouched on the brink of one of the brook´s crystal
shelves, where, before falling, it stopped to have its picture taken and
take pictures iteself, Van, at the last throb, saw the reflection of Ada´s
gaze in the water flash a warning. Something of the sort had happened
somewhere before"
page 217: "Van found himself standing on the brink of the brook ( which had
reflected two pair of superposed eyes earlier in the afternoon)
Brink/brook/book are related to the cufflink scuffles and a duel.
page 210 " the most extraordinary word in the English language was 'husked',
because it stood for opposite things, covered and uncovered, tightly husked
but easily husked, meaning they peel off quite easily...
page211 "There she husked out of her sweat shirt" .
page 217/8: " How did the scuffle start? Did all three cross the brook
stepping on slimy stones? (...) they grappled on the brink of the brook"
(...) " whereupon he sat up, spitting, palpating his throatm rearranging the
rumpled shirt around his husky torso and asking Greg in a husky voice to
find a missing cufflink. Van washed his hand in a lower shelf-pool of the
brook (...) Presently Greg overtook them, bringing the cufflink (...) Percy
closed his silk cuff, thus completing his insolent restoration ".
page 222: " Lucette had those chaste shorts on today, and Ada, husked-corn
( laughing) trousers.
other doublings like "brink of the brook" in Ada: lore/role;
eros/rose/sore; vim of avid venery;orchards/orchids;Tartar/torture; knucke
knock;sacred secret;lapse of the lisping lips; myth behind the moth;dragon
drug; jungle jiungles;stare at stars;Procrustean procrastination;lives in a
villa above Valvey; poaching peaches...
..............................................................
Page 218: Is there a reference to a "preservative" ( condom) below the
"rack" of the brook when Van "recognized, with amused embarassment, the
transparent, tubular thing, not unlike a sea-squirt, that had got caught in
it downstream course...")
................................................................
Other VN remarks on style in Ada:
" I´m allergic to allegory and am quite sure he was just enjoying himself by
crossbreeding casual fancies just for the fun of the contour and color" (
pag 344) (...)
" physical pain makes one supremely indifferent to such moral issues as
Lucette´s fate, and rather amusing, if that is the right word, to constate
that one bothers about problems of style even at those atrocious moments"
( pag459).
----- End forwarded message -----
"Tropes are the dreams of speech" ( VN-Ada, page 328)
and, while I was leafing and "leavesdropping" thru Ada, to select special
"VN´s imagery" I came across my pencil marks on Nabokov´s tactic of making
sounds double over themselves to reappear with slight variations several
pages later ( " something of the sort had happened somewhere before"...)
page 164: She was not really reading (...) if she picked up a book, would at
once get engrossed in whatever text she happened to slip into 'from the
book´s brink' with the natural movement of a water creature put back into
its brook".
pages210/11 "As they crouched on the brink of one of the brook´s crystal
shelves, where, before falling, it stopped to have its picture taken and
take pictures iteself, Van, at the last throb, saw the reflection of Ada´s
gaze in the water flash a warning. Something of the sort had happened
somewhere before"
page 217: "Van found himself standing on the brink of the brook ( which had
reflected two pair of superposed eyes earlier in the afternoon)
Brink/brook/book are related to the cufflink scuffles and a duel.
page 210 " the most extraordinary word in the English language was 'husked',
because it stood for opposite things, covered and uncovered, tightly husked
but easily husked, meaning they peel off quite easily...
page211 "There she husked out of her sweat shirt" .
page 217/8: " How did the scuffle start? Did all three cross the brook
stepping on slimy stones? (...) they grappled on the brink of the brook"
(...) " whereupon he sat up, spitting, palpating his throatm rearranging the
rumpled shirt around his husky torso and asking Greg in a husky voice to
find a missing cufflink. Van washed his hand in a lower shelf-pool of the
brook (...) Presently Greg overtook them, bringing the cufflink (...) Percy
closed his silk cuff, thus completing his insolent restoration ".
page 222: " Lucette had those chaste shorts on today, and Ada, husked-corn
( laughing) trousers.
other doublings like "brink of the brook" in Ada: lore/role;
eros/rose/sore; vim of avid venery;orchards/orchids;Tartar/torture; knucke
knock;sacred secret;lapse of the lisping lips; myth behind the moth;dragon
drug; jungle jiungles;stare at stars;Procrustean procrastination;lives in a
villa above Valvey; poaching peaches...
..............................................................
Page 218: Is there a reference to a "preservative" ( condom) below the
"rack" of the brook when Van "recognized, with amused embarassment, the
transparent, tubular thing, not unlike a sea-squirt, that had got caught in
it downstream course...")
................................................................
Other VN remarks on style in Ada:
" I´m allergic to allegory and am quite sure he was just enjoying himself by
crossbreeding casual fancies just for the fun of the contour and color" (
pag 344) (...)
" physical pain makes one supremely indifferent to such moral issues as
Lucette´s fate, and rather amusing, if that is the right word, to constate
that one bothers about problems of style even at those atrocious moments"
( pag459).
----- End forwarded message -----