Subject
Re: TT-2 color of Ascot Hotel shutters
From
Date
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From Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
> 2. What do you make, if anything, of the "mnemoptical trick" re the color
> of the Ascot Hotel?
Our esteemed editor may recall this ancient (by Internet standards)
message, originally posted to NABOKV-L on November 15, 1993. I will add
only that I suspect color plays a significant role in TT, whose main
character is Hugh [Hue] Person.
_________
NABOKOVIANS: Here is my full solution to the question I posed last week:
What is the nature of the mnemoptical trick which causes Hugh Person, in
chapter 2 of Transparent Things, to remember the hotel's cherry-red
shutters as being apple green?
Don Johnson, Ted Ficklen, and Jay Edelnant were all quick to point
out that by the principle of Color Opponency, the color of an afterimage is
the complimentary of the color of the object which caused it. Gene
Barabtarlo emphasized that apple green (which tends more towards yellow
than towards blue) is indeed the complimentary of magenta (or cherry red).
All this explains perfectly the "optical" part of the trick.
But what has memory to do with it? With respect to the "mnemo-"
part of the trick, I offer the following solution:
Our first small clue is the mention, in the chapter's first
sentence, of a vowel switch: "Hugh Person ... pronounced 'Parson' by some".
Also relevant, although its relevance become obvious only later, is the
fact that Hugh speaks both English and French. In checking into the hotel,
he uses both--this is, after all, Switzerland, and both languages are
floating around in Person's head.
It is in the first paragraph that we are told that the hotel
"sported cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some
mnemoptical trick he remembered as apple green." The minor mystery would
end there were it not for the reappearance of the term "apple-green" in the
chapter's final paragraph in the form of an "apple-green-aproned valet".
(The valet has already appeared in paragraph 1, but the color of his apron
is not then specified). Something funny's going on here.
The mot-clef is "valet". Spelled and (very nearly) pronounced the
same in English and in French, it is the word which opens, so to speak, the
door between the English and French sections of Hugh's brain (and who
better to open a door than a servant?) How does this relate to the hotel's
shutters? "Shutter" in French is commonly rendered as "volet", which is
only a vowel away (as Parson is from Person) from "valet". What's more, the
valet is wearing an apple-green _apron_. Apron in French is "tablier", and
"tablier" can also connote (as even the small French/ English dictionary on
my desk confirms) "flue-shutter; (iron or steel) shutter".
In Person's Anglo-French brain the color associated with the
valet's "tablier" is transferred to the hotel's "volets". The transfer is
reinforced by the principle of Color Opponency and the happy coincidence
that shutters and apron are of complimentary colors.
So runs my explanation of this marvelous transposition of Hugh's.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
From Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
> 2. What do you make, if anything, of the "mnemoptical trick" re the color
> of the Ascot Hotel?
Our esteemed editor may recall this ancient (by Internet standards)
message, originally posted to NABOKV-L on November 15, 1993. I will add
only that I suspect color plays a significant role in TT, whose main
character is Hugh [Hue] Person.
_________
NABOKOVIANS: Here is my full solution to the question I posed last week:
What is the nature of the mnemoptical trick which causes Hugh Person, in
chapter 2 of Transparent Things, to remember the hotel's cherry-red
shutters as being apple green?
Don Johnson, Ted Ficklen, and Jay Edelnant were all quick to point
out that by the principle of Color Opponency, the color of an afterimage is
the complimentary of the color of the object which caused it. Gene
Barabtarlo emphasized that apple green (which tends more towards yellow
than towards blue) is indeed the complimentary of magenta (or cherry red).
All this explains perfectly the "optical" part of the trick.
But what has memory to do with it? With respect to the "mnemo-"
part of the trick, I offer the following solution:
Our first small clue is the mention, in the chapter's first
sentence, of a vowel switch: "Hugh Person ... pronounced 'Parson' by some".
Also relevant, although its relevance become obvious only later, is the
fact that Hugh speaks both English and French. In checking into the hotel,
he uses both--this is, after all, Switzerland, and both languages are
floating around in Person's head.
It is in the first paragraph that we are told that the hotel
"sported cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some
mnemoptical trick he remembered as apple green." The minor mystery would
end there were it not for the reappearance of the term "apple-green" in the
chapter's final paragraph in the form of an "apple-green-aproned valet".
(The valet has already appeared in paragraph 1, but the color of his apron
is not then specified). Something funny's going on here.
The mot-clef is "valet". Spelled and (very nearly) pronounced the
same in English and in French, it is the word which opens, so to speak, the
door between the English and French sections of Hugh's brain (and who
better to open a door than a servant?) How does this relate to the hotel's
shutters? "Shutter" in French is commonly rendered as "volet", which is
only a vowel away (as Parson is from Person) from "valet". What's more, the
valet is wearing an apple-green _apron_. Apron in French is "tablier", and
"tablier" can also connote (as even the small French/ English dictionary on
my desk confirms) "flue-shutter; (iron or steel) shutter".
In Person's Anglo-French brain the color associated with the
valet's "tablier" is transferred to the hotel's "volets". The transfer is
reinforced by the principle of Color Opponency and the happy coincidence
that shutters and apron are of complimentary colors.
So runs my explanation of this marvelous transposition of Hugh's.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L