Subject
Re: ADA's caryatids and caryatics
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Dear List and Mary.
Thank you so much, Mary, for calling my attention to the fact that the
Caryatid columns from " la città de Caria" ( a town in Laconia ) are not
related to Queen Ada´s Caria ( Anatolia ), as I had imagined.
Indeed, I threw at you all a true "macédoine" of information and historical
data - and here I´m not referring to Queen Ada´s adopted son, Alexander of
Macedonia, but to the mixed salad - hopefuly not as VN employed it to speak
about Lucette!
She was, cette Lucette, like the girl in Ah, cette Line (a popular novel),
'a macédoine of intuition, stupidity, naïveté and cunning.' ( ch.24)
The associative nets generated by words and sounds cannot be completely
conquered even by authors such as Joyce and Nabokov.
Nobody would immediately think that Van´s acrobatics and muscular
"caryatics" could have the any direct relation to his grandfather Dedalus
nor to King Wing or to Brueghel´s painting of " The Death of Icarus", and
yet there is still a "sonorous" association lying in wait for us with a
recurrence of the significant "caria".
Mary was kind to concede that: " Nabokov's "caryatics" is a witty
portmanteau construction. As Boyd points put, it is a meant to sound like a
medical term for the muscles or tendons that come into play when Van stands
on his hands. But the image it conjures up -- of the caryatid columns of the
Erechtheum in Athens -- is also very apposite, because these figures too
would need strong "caryatics" to hold up the roof of the temple porch".
Now comes a surprise full of sound ( not fury), but signifying nothing:
Daedalus buried his son Icarus, who plunged into the sea after an
unsucessful flight to escape their imprisionment in Crete - in the " Island
of Icaria" !
The references to caryatics, Wing, Dedalus, Tarantine sails ( Joyce´s
Daedalus) in Ada are:
"Two years earlier, when about to begin his first prison term at the
fashionable and brutal boarding school, to which other Veens had gone before
him (as far back as the days 'when Washingtonias were Wellingtonias'), Van
had resolved to study some striking stunt that would give him an immediate
and brilliant ascendancy. Accordingly, after a conference with Demon, King
Wing, the latter's wrestling master, taught the strong lad to walk on his
hands by means of a special play of the shoulder muscles, a trick that
necessitated for its acquirement and improvement nothing short of a
dislocation of the caryatics.
What pleasure (...) what a breathtaking long neural caress when one became
airborne for the first time and managed to skim over a haystack, a tree, a
burn, a barn, while Grandfather Dedalus Veen, running with upturned face,
flourished a flag and fell into the horsepond.
(...) His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a
Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking (...) King Wing warned him that
Vekchelo, a Yukon professional, lost it by the time he was twenty-two; but
that summer afternoon, on the silky ground of the pineglade, in the magical
heart of Ardis, under Lady Erminin's blue eye, fourteen-year-old Van treated
us to the greatest performance we have ever seen a brachiambulant give
(ch13).
( Dead Lady Erminin´s blue eyes were later described as being 'persian
blue'...)
Ada, for me, reaches not only my eyes as a written novel with a definite
structure and carrying pictorial images. It is also a complete symphony of
sounds and their point-counterpoint, perhaps more than the tessiture of
their meaning, are one of the elements that delight me while reading it.
Thank you,
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 2:52 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: caryatids and caryatics
I haven't been following the recent Ada thread but
the mention of caryatids happened to catch my eye.
For the record:
(1) on the web page Jansy quotes, "caryatics" is
just a typo -- it should be "caryatids"
(2) "Caryatid" has nothing to do with Caria in
Anatolia or any queens it may have had. The "città
di Caria" mentioned in the Italian definition
refers to Caryae, a town in Laconia, a part of
mainland Greece. The traditional explanation is
that the term is derived from Artemis Caryatis, an
avatar of Artemis worshipped around Caryae. That
by the way is also the derivation given in
Webster's II.
Nabokov's "caryatics" is a witty portmanteau
construction. As Boyd points put, it is a meant to
sound like a medical term for the muscles or
tendons that come into play when Van stands on his
hands. But the image it conjures up -- of the
caryatid columns of the Erechtheum in Athens -- is
also very apposite, because these figures too
would need strong "caryatics" to hold up the roof
of the temple porch.
Hoping that PF screenplay turns up soon --
Mary
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
Thank you so much, Mary, for calling my attention to the fact that the
Caryatid columns from " la città de Caria" ( a town in Laconia ) are not
related to Queen Ada´s Caria ( Anatolia ), as I had imagined.
Indeed, I threw at you all a true "macédoine" of information and historical
data - and here I´m not referring to Queen Ada´s adopted son, Alexander of
Macedonia, but to the mixed salad - hopefuly not as VN employed it to speak
about Lucette!
She was, cette Lucette, like the girl in Ah, cette Line (a popular novel),
'a macédoine of intuition, stupidity, naïveté and cunning.' ( ch.24)
The associative nets generated by words and sounds cannot be completely
conquered even by authors such as Joyce and Nabokov.
Nobody would immediately think that Van´s acrobatics and muscular
"caryatics" could have the any direct relation to his grandfather Dedalus
nor to King Wing or to Brueghel´s painting of " The Death of Icarus", and
yet there is still a "sonorous" association lying in wait for us with a
recurrence of the significant "caria".
Mary was kind to concede that: " Nabokov's "caryatics" is a witty
portmanteau construction. As Boyd points put, it is a meant to sound like a
medical term for the muscles or tendons that come into play when Van stands
on his hands. But the image it conjures up -- of the caryatid columns of the
Erechtheum in Athens -- is also very apposite, because these figures too
would need strong "caryatics" to hold up the roof of the temple porch".
Now comes a surprise full of sound ( not fury), but signifying nothing:
Daedalus buried his son Icarus, who plunged into the sea after an
unsucessful flight to escape their imprisionment in Crete - in the " Island
of Icaria" !
The references to caryatics, Wing, Dedalus, Tarantine sails ( Joyce´s
Daedalus) in Ada are:
"Two years earlier, when about to begin his first prison term at the
fashionable and brutal boarding school, to which other Veens had gone before
him (as far back as the days 'when Washingtonias were Wellingtonias'), Van
had resolved to study some striking stunt that would give him an immediate
and brilliant ascendancy. Accordingly, after a conference with Demon, King
Wing, the latter's wrestling master, taught the strong lad to walk on his
hands by means of a special play of the shoulder muscles, a trick that
necessitated for its acquirement and improvement nothing short of a
dislocation of the caryatics.
What pleasure (...) what a breathtaking long neural caress when one became
airborne for the first time and managed to skim over a haystack, a tree, a
burn, a barn, while Grandfather Dedalus Veen, running with upturned face,
flourished a flag and fell into the horsepond.
(...) His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a
Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking (...) King Wing warned him that
Vekchelo, a Yukon professional, lost it by the time he was twenty-two; but
that summer afternoon, on the silky ground of the pineglade, in the magical
heart of Ardis, under Lady Erminin's blue eye, fourteen-year-old Van treated
us to the greatest performance we have ever seen a brachiambulant give
(ch13).
( Dead Lady Erminin´s blue eyes were later described as being 'persian
blue'...)
Ada, for me, reaches not only my eyes as a written novel with a definite
structure and carrying pictorial images. It is also a complete symphony of
sounds and their point-counterpoint, perhaps more than the tessiture of
their meaning, are one of the elements that delight me while reading it.
Thank you,
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 2:52 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: caryatids and caryatics
I haven't been following the recent Ada thread but
the mention of caryatids happened to catch my eye.
For the record:
(1) on the web page Jansy quotes, "caryatics" is
just a typo -- it should be "caryatids"
(2) "Caryatid" has nothing to do with Caria in
Anatolia or any queens it may have had. The "città
di Caria" mentioned in the Italian definition
refers to Caryae, a town in Laconia, a part of
mainland Greece. The traditional explanation is
that the term is derived from Artemis Caryatis, an
avatar of Artemis worshipped around Caryae. That
by the way is also the derivation given in
Webster's II.
Nabokov's "caryatics" is a witty portmanteau
construction. As Boyd points put, it is a meant to
sound like a medical term for the muscles or
tendons that come into play when Van stands on his
hands. But the image it conjures up -- of the
caryatid columns of the Erechtheum in Athens -- is
also very apposite, because these figures too
would need strong "caryatics" to hold up the roof
of the temple porch.
Hoping that PF screenplay turns up soon --
Mary
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----