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Fw: spine-reading
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EDNOTE. I imagine the critical metaphor of "spine-reading" is yet older than this. Or maybe the hair in the back of the neck.
----- Original Message -----
From: alex
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 4:14 PM
Subject: spine-reading
Since Brian broached the subject of human spine as a good reader's main organ, I want to make a side note re the metaphor of spine-reading and its possible origin in Nabokov. In 1863, Turgenev wrote to Fet about Tolstoy's story Polikushka: "Dazhe do kholoda v spinnoy kosti probiraet, a ved' ona u nas uzhe tolstaya i grubaya." ("One even feels a shiver in the backbone, and, with us, it is already thick and coarse." No pun is intended by "tolstaya").
I'm not sure that Turgenev was the first who used that image. Anyway, in his Lectures on Literature intended for Western students, Nabokov uses more often than is generally believed images and metaphors that he has borrowed from his Russian forefathers.
Alexey Beskhrebetnyi (The spineless)
----- Original Message -----
From: alex
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 4:14 PM
Subject: spine-reading
Since Brian broached the subject of human spine as a good reader's main organ, I want to make a side note re the metaphor of spine-reading and its possible origin in Nabokov. In 1863, Turgenev wrote to Fet about Tolstoy's story Polikushka: "Dazhe do kholoda v spinnoy kosti probiraet, a ved' ona u nas uzhe tolstaya i grubaya." ("One even feels a shiver in the backbone, and, with us, it is already thick and coarse." No pun is intended by "tolstaya").
I'm not sure that Turgenev was the first who used that image. Anyway, in his Lectures on Literature intended for Western students, Nabokov uses more often than is generally believed images and metaphors that he has borrowed from his Russian forefathers.
Alexey Beskhrebetnyi (The spineless)