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Fwd: Re: TT-17 Oriental sexual customs
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EDNOTE. See after Jansy's note.
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:41:05 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
We all know that VN was not xenophobic or prone to make glib depreciative
statements about other cultures, such as the one that has been puzzling Akiko:
' "if we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits
in many other respects:" What does VN has in mind as the customs? '
and in one of his comments our ED observed that VN refered to "Far Eastern
sexual customs" and that he 'apparently illustrates the "fictitious" and the
"factual" distinction by reference to old Japanese prints'.
I´m not sure I can follow him in his rich comparative examples gleaned from TT,
Ada and The gift concerning the inclusion of "sexual" in "Far Eastern customs"
in association to "fact and fiction". What can we understand by "sexual fiction"
and "sexual fact"? I don´t think that a realistic evaluation of sexual potency
leads one to consider this " a sexual fact", or that erotic fantasies that soar
away from the actual love-making experience qualify as " sexual fictions".
Jansy
-------------------------------------------------
EDNOTE. I don't think VN is necessarily being xenophobic here.
His point is the stark contrast of mundane reality and intense sensation. He
finds a semi-reverse parallel for Armande's quirk in Japanese art. Note that
even for Armande at rare moments an expression of "dazed ecstasy" breaks thru.
------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 1:12 AM
Subject: TT-17
Akiko's Note:
66.12-14: "if we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually
halfwits in many other respects:" What does VN has in mind as the customs? I
might be expected to figure it out as one from the Far East, but I must
confess I have no idea (virtually half-witted!). "The contrast between the
fictitious and the factual" is, for example, the Chinese reversals associated
with death in *The Gift*?
TT passage:
Hugh's mediocre potency might not have survived the ordeal had she
concealed from him more
completely than she thought she did the excitement derived from the contrast
between the fictitious and the factual -- a
contrast which after all has certain claims to artistic subtlety if
we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern
people, virtually halfwits in many other respects. But his chief support
lay in the never deceived expectancy of the dazed
ecstasy that gradually idolized her dear features, notwithstanding
her efforts to maintain the flippant patter.
--------
EDNOTE. Akiko's Note calls attention to VN's (or Mr. R's) remark about "Far
Eastern sexual customs" and ponders what customs these might be. A couple of
passages from ADA (cited below) offer some clarification. VN apparently
illustrates the "fictitious" and the "factual" distinction by reference to old
Japanese prints such as the one I have attached. Although it is not particularly
evident in this example, an examination of erotic shunga and ukiyo-e prints
shows that the faces of the participants, especially females in frenzied
couplings, very often display no emotion. This disjunction of strong emotion
and stolid expression is presumably what VN has in mind in his account of
Armande's sexual protocol. Although I know very little about such matters I
would hazard that the Japanese dichotomy may be in some part a by-product of
the limitations of woodblock printing as well as local traditions of sexual
etiquette. Perhaps those better informed could enlighten us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADA passages:
The collection of Uncle Dan's Oriental Erotica prints turned out to be
artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically. In the most hilarious, and
expensive, picture, a Mongolian woman with an inane oval face surmounted by a
hideous hair-do was shown communicating sexually with six rather plump,
blank-faced gymnasts in what looked like a display window jammed with screens,
potted plants, silks, paper fans and crockery. Three of the males, contorted in
attitudes of intricate discomfort, were using simultaneously three of the
harlot's main orifices; two older clients were treated by her manually, and the
sixth, a dwarf, had to be contented with her deformed foot. Six other
voluptuaries were sodomizing her immediate partners, and one more had got stuck
in her armpit. Uncle Dan, having patiently disentangled all those limbs and
belly folds directly or indirectly connected with the absolutely calm lady
(still retaining somehow parts of her robes), had penciled a note that gave the
price of the picture and identified it as: 'Geisha with 13 lovers.' Van located,
however, a fifteenth navel thrown in by the generous artist but impossible to
account for anatomically.
----------------------------
'- took place at coincident dates, we were just ordinary sisters, exchanging
routine nothings, having little in common, she collecting cactuses or running
through her lines for the next audition in Sterva, and I reading a lot, or
copying beautiful erotic pictures from an album of Forbidden Masterpieces that
we found, apropos, in a box of korsetov i khrestomatiy (corsets and
chrestomathies) which Belle had left behind, and I can assure you, they were
far more realistic than the scroll-painting by Mong Mong, very active in 888, a
millennium before Ada said it illustrated Oriental calisthenics when I found it
by chance in the corner of one of my ambuscades.
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:41:05 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
We all know that VN was not xenophobic or prone to make glib depreciative
statements about other cultures, such as the one that has been puzzling Akiko:
' "if we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits
in many other respects:" What does VN has in mind as the customs? '
and in one of his comments our ED observed that VN refered to "Far Eastern
sexual customs" and that he 'apparently illustrates the "fictitious" and the
"factual" distinction by reference to old Japanese prints'.
I´m not sure I can follow him in his rich comparative examples gleaned from TT,
Ada and The gift concerning the inclusion of "sexual" in "Far Eastern customs"
in association to "fact and fiction". What can we understand by "sexual fiction"
and "sexual fact"? I don´t think that a realistic evaluation of sexual potency
leads one to consider this " a sexual fact", or that erotic fantasies that soar
away from the actual love-making experience qualify as " sexual fictions".
Jansy
-------------------------------------------------
EDNOTE. I don't think VN is necessarily being xenophobic here.
His point is the stark contrast of mundane reality and intense sensation. He
finds a semi-reverse parallel for Armande's quirk in Japanese art. Note that
even for Armande at rare moments an expression of "dazed ecstasy" breaks thru.
------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 1:12 AM
Subject: TT-17
Akiko's Note:
66.12-14: "if we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually
halfwits in many other respects:" What does VN has in mind as the customs? I
might be expected to figure it out as one from the Far East, but I must
confess I have no idea (virtually half-witted!). "The contrast between the
fictitious and the factual" is, for example, the Chinese reversals associated
with death in *The Gift*?
TT passage:
Hugh's mediocre potency might not have survived the ordeal had she
concealed from him more
completely than she thought she did the excitement derived from the contrast
between the fictitious and the factual -- a
contrast which after all has certain claims to artistic subtlety if
we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern
people, virtually halfwits in many other respects. But his chief support
lay in the never deceived expectancy of the dazed
ecstasy that gradually idolized her dear features, notwithstanding
her efforts to maintain the flippant patter.
--------
EDNOTE. Akiko's Note calls attention to VN's (or Mr. R's) remark about "Far
Eastern sexual customs" and ponders what customs these might be. A couple of
passages from ADA (cited below) offer some clarification. VN apparently
illustrates the "fictitious" and the "factual" distinction by reference to old
Japanese prints such as the one I have attached. Although it is not particularly
evident in this example, an examination of erotic shunga and ukiyo-e prints
shows that the faces of the participants, especially females in frenzied
couplings, very often display no emotion. This disjunction of strong emotion
and stolid expression is presumably what VN has in mind in his account of
Armande's sexual protocol. Although I know very little about such matters I
would hazard that the Japanese dichotomy may be in some part a by-product of
the limitations of woodblock printing as well as local traditions of sexual
etiquette. Perhaps those better informed could enlighten us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADA passages:
The collection of Uncle Dan's Oriental Erotica prints turned out to be
artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically. In the most hilarious, and
expensive, picture, a Mongolian woman with an inane oval face surmounted by a
hideous hair-do was shown communicating sexually with six rather plump,
blank-faced gymnasts in what looked like a display window jammed with screens,
potted plants, silks, paper fans and crockery. Three of the males, contorted in
attitudes of intricate discomfort, were using simultaneously three of the
harlot's main orifices; two older clients were treated by her manually, and the
sixth, a dwarf, had to be contented with her deformed foot. Six other
voluptuaries were sodomizing her immediate partners, and one more had got stuck
in her armpit. Uncle Dan, having patiently disentangled all those limbs and
belly folds directly or indirectly connected with the absolutely calm lady
(still retaining somehow parts of her robes), had penciled a note that gave the
price of the picture and identified it as: 'Geisha with 13 lovers.' Van located,
however, a fifteenth navel thrown in by the generous artist but impossible to
account for anatomically.
----------------------------
'- took place at coincident dates, we were just ordinary sisters, exchanging
routine nothings, having little in common, she collecting cactuses or running
through her lines for the next audition in Sterva, and I reading a lot, or
copying beautiful erotic pictures from an album of Forbidden Masterpieces that
we found, apropos, in a box of korsetov i khrestomatiy (corsets and
chrestomathies) which Belle had left behind, and I can assure you, they were
far more realistic than the scroll-painting by Mong Mong, very active in 888, a
millennium before Ada said it illustrated Oriental calisthenics when I found it
by chance in the corner of one of my ambuscades.
----- End forwarded message -----