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RES: [NABOKV-L] illustrated vocabulary with quotes
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Ian Leader-Elliott "Diana is delicate rather than obtuse, I suspect, in her
explanation of 'orchideous'.*
Jansy Mello: How curious, in Lolita V.Nabokov didnt find it necessary to
explain his pun to obtuse readers but, in ADA, he gratuitously mentions
twice the strict meaning of orchid
Alas, the testibulus (test tube never to be confused with testiculus,
orchid) and in the notes on p.321. Knabenkräuter: Germ., orchids (and
testicles).
There are various references and word games:
His nights in the hammock (where that other poor youth had cursed his blood
cough and sunk back into dreams of prowling black spumas and a crash of
symbols in an orchal orchestra as suggested to him by career physicians)
were now haunted not so much by the agony of his desire for Ada **
but impatient young passion (brimming like Vans overflowing bath while he
is reworking this, a crotchety gray old wordman on the edge of a hotel bed)
did not survive the first few blind thrusts; it burst at the lip of the
orchid.
Shes terribly nervous, the poor kid, remarked Ada stretching across Van
toward the Wipex. You can order that breakfast now unless... Oh, what a
good sight! Orchids. Ive never seen a man make such a speedy recovery.
The most delicate one, considering the summing up of his evaluation of
Ernest Hemmingway (and why Chekhov?), in SO, is:
She likes, said Van, what all our belles like balls, orchids, and The
Cherry Orchard.
............................................................................
...
* - "In discussing his jealous regarding other men, Humbert wrote,
Suddenly, all dimples, she beamed sweetly at them, as she never did at my
orchideous masculinity.
** p.61. horsecart: an old anagram. It leads here to a skit on Freudian
dream charades (symbols in an orchal orchestra) Cf. (where a former
summer guest, with an opera cloak over his clammy nightshirt, had awoken
once because a stink bomb had burst among the instruments in the horsecart,
and striking a match, Uncle Van had seen the bright blood blotching his
pillow).
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