Subject
Re [NABOKV-L] Benten and Jurojin
From
Date
Body
Alexey Sklyarenko:Jurojin and Benten are two of the seven lucky gods (Shichifukujin) of Japan... mentioned ...in the "Japanese" chapter of Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days."
JM: I forgot Alexey Sklyarenko's mention of Verne's novel in relation to flavita pieces, Baron Klim von Avidov (anagram) and the lucky pieces like a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurokin. Jules Verne is present almost from the start, when Uncle Dan "set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe." and, later, when Ada plans to travel by the New World Express "to the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant’s Horn, a Villa in Verna..." Great indication, thanks!
Jupiter is often related to Japan or to things Japanese.
Cf end of ch.3, pg. 520, when Van "pounced upon her new, young, divine, Japanese neck which he had been coveting like a veritable Jupiter Olorinus throughout the evening." with its confabulated imagery of Ada's swanlike neck and Jupiter as a swan.
The theme of Leda and Jupiter was modernistically painted on the wall of the Three Swans hotel*. Their divine conjunction produced Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra and the twins, Castor and Pollux.
Helen of Troy herself is mentioned in the same chapter (p.530) close to lines that were first quoted in "Spring in Fialta" ( "Tu sais que j'en vais mourir").**
All of these are links that I'd either forgotten or hadn't noticed before! (but the second reference to "tu sais que j'en vais mourir", in Ada, was the most striking) ***
Japan is also mentioned in connection to Dan's erotic engravings:"trying numberless times to unlock with every key in the house the cabinet in which Walter Daniel Veen kept ‘Jap. & Ind. erot. prints’ as seen distinctly labeled through the glazed door...[Ada] had still been rather hazy about the way human beings mated. She was very observant, of course, and had closely examined various insects in copula, but at the period discussed clear examples of mammalian maleness had rarely come to her notice and had remained unconnected with any idea or possibility of sexual function" and to a horseless trap, perhaps a rickshaw since "Uncle Dan once had a Japanese valet." Uncle Dan’s Oriental Erotica were "artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically."
...and to butterflies (.p.85), again in the context of flavita: "Lying on his stomach, leaning his cheek on his hand, Van looked at his love’s inclined neck as she played anagrams with Grace, who had innocently suggested ‘insect.’...‘Incest,’ said Ada instantly...But the glow of the afternoon had entered its most oppressive phase...A pale diaphanous butterfly with a very black body followed them and Ada cried ‘Look!’ and explained it was closely related to a Japanese Parnassian."
The author's reference to Ada's scientific acumen about mating butterflies, allied to her infantile innocence about mammalian maleness and sexual function, may reveal something about adult Nabokov's etymological researches and his childhood experience as a lepidopterist. Uncle Dan often reminds me of Nabokov's Uncle Ruka's fascinating world travels.
How this relates to Chateaubriand, a "phalene" ("butterfly dog"), incest/insect, Ida, Parnassus, Jupiter and flavita...beats me!
..................................................................................................................................
* - The hall of the Trois Cygnes was renewed by Swiss-German Louis Wicht and in "the lounge, as seen through its entrance, the huge memorable oil — three ample-haunched Ledas swapping lacustrine impressions — had been replaced by a neoprimitive masterpiece showing three yellow eggs and a pair of plumber’s gloves on what looked like wet bathroom tiling."
Wicht/Witch? is: related to an Argentinian city:" He decided that ...he would undertake long travels in South America, Africa, India. As a boy of fifteen (Eric Veen’s age of florescence)...From Manhattan, via Mephisto, El Paso, Meksikansk and the Panama Chunnel, the dark-red New World Express reached Brazilia and Witch (or Viedma, founded by a Russian admiral). There it split into two parts, the eastern one continuing to Grant’s Horn, and the western returning north through Valparaiso and Bogota. On alternate days the fabulous journey began in Yukonsk, a two-way section going to the Atlantic seaboard, while another, via California and Central America, roared into Uruguay. The dark blue African Express began in London and reached the Cape by three different routes, through Nigero, Rodosia or Ephiopia. Finally, the brown Orient Express joined London to Ceylon and Sydney, via Turkey and several Chunnels..."
** - Using simple google tools I got to "The Children of the King a Tale of Southern Italy" by Marion Crawford - fiction.
books.google.com.br/books?isbn=141794532X... I extracted a quote: "Beatrice struck a few chords and then, looking at the Count with half closed eyes, began to sing the pathetic little song of Chiquita. "On dit que l'on the marie/ Tu sais que j'en vais mourir -" Her voice was very sweet and true and there was real pathos in the words...But as she went on, San Miniato noticed first that she repeated the second line..."
The author's name is worth checking: F. Marion Crawford
Using VN-L google, the items were a bit garbled (sometimes no dates, no name...)
1. (2010, september) In Nabokov's story the verses came from "some Parisian drama of love," sung "by an old maiden aunt" of his."...
2. In her 2010 PhD thesis, the translator of Spring in Fialta, Graziela Schneider adds the usual explanatory notes. In one of them, related to the lines in French "On dis que tu te maries, Tu sais que j'en vai mourir -" she collects as possible references: Alfred de Musset's Frederic et Bernerette; Alphonse Daudet's Fromont jeune et Risler aine; a chanson by T. Cazorati (1871-18790 and Alexander Dumas Son in L'Ami des femmes.
3. I understood VN had stopped using images extracted from Greek-mythology in his short-stories after the thirties, but in his novels, such as ADA and in TT these references are quite frequent. I wonder if their occurrence is linked to the suggestive power of their names and actions, after it gets transformed into scientific or everyday words ( such as hymeneus=marriage, for example, as we find in VN's translation of the French song ..."on dit que tu te marries, tu sais que j"en vais mourir" in "Spring in Fialta", linking "hymen and death evoked by the rythm...", cf. Stories, page 415)
*** - "Van was apt to relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of Hell.// ‘Castle True, Castle Bright!’ he now cried, ‘Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!’...‘Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet —’... ‘Oh! Qui me rendra mon Helene —’...‘— et le phalene.’."
Ada exclaims: "‘Je t’emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j’en vais mourir.’." Dorothy Vinelander "gray-caped and mannish-hatted, energetically beckoning with her unfurled umbrella," interrupts them ( Dolly is "mannish-hatted," like Garbo. How does this relate to "Manhattan" and "Tanned Man in a Hat"?). From Vivien Darkbloom's index we gather: p.111. Ma soeur te souvient-il encore: first line of the third sextet of Chateaubriand’s Romance a Helene (‘Combien j’ai douce souvenance’) composed to an Auvergne tune that he heard during a trip to Mont Dore in 1805 and later inserted in his novella Le Dernier Abencerage. The final (fifth) sextet begins with ‘Oh! qui me rendra mon Helene. Et ma montagne et le grand chene’ — one of the leitmotivs of the present novel....
p.407. Olorinus: from Lat. olor, swan (Leda’s lover).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
JM: I forgot Alexey Sklyarenko's mention of Verne's novel in relation to flavita pieces, Baron Klim von Avidov (anagram) and the lucky pieces like a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurokin. Jules Verne is present almost from the start, when Uncle Dan "set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe." and, later, when Ada plans to travel by the New World Express "to the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant’s Horn, a Villa in Verna..." Great indication, thanks!
Jupiter is often related to Japan or to things Japanese.
Cf end of ch.3, pg. 520, when Van "pounced upon her new, young, divine, Japanese neck which he had been coveting like a veritable Jupiter Olorinus throughout the evening." with its confabulated imagery of Ada's swanlike neck and Jupiter as a swan.
The theme of Leda and Jupiter was modernistically painted on the wall of the Three Swans hotel*. Their divine conjunction produced Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra and the twins, Castor and Pollux.
Helen of Troy herself is mentioned in the same chapter (p.530) close to lines that were first quoted in "Spring in Fialta" ( "Tu sais que j'en vais mourir").**
All of these are links that I'd either forgotten or hadn't noticed before! (but the second reference to "tu sais que j'en vais mourir", in Ada, was the most striking) ***
Japan is also mentioned in connection to Dan's erotic engravings:"trying numberless times to unlock with every key in the house the cabinet in which Walter Daniel Veen kept ‘Jap. & Ind. erot. prints’ as seen distinctly labeled through the glazed door...[Ada] had still been rather hazy about the way human beings mated. She was very observant, of course, and had closely examined various insects in copula, but at the period discussed clear examples of mammalian maleness had rarely come to her notice and had remained unconnected with any idea or possibility of sexual function" and to a horseless trap, perhaps a rickshaw since "Uncle Dan once had a Japanese valet." Uncle Dan’s Oriental Erotica were "artistically second-rate and inept calisthenically."
...and to butterflies (.p.85), again in the context of flavita: "Lying on his stomach, leaning his cheek on his hand, Van looked at his love’s inclined neck as she played anagrams with Grace, who had innocently suggested ‘insect.’...‘Incest,’ said Ada instantly...But the glow of the afternoon had entered its most oppressive phase...A pale diaphanous butterfly with a very black body followed them and Ada cried ‘Look!’ and explained it was closely related to a Japanese Parnassian."
The author's reference to Ada's scientific acumen about mating butterflies, allied to her infantile innocence about mammalian maleness and sexual function, may reveal something about adult Nabokov's etymological researches and his childhood experience as a lepidopterist. Uncle Dan often reminds me of Nabokov's Uncle Ruka's fascinating world travels.
How this relates to Chateaubriand, a "phalene" ("butterfly dog"), incest/insect, Ida, Parnassus, Jupiter and flavita...beats me!
..................................................................................................................................
* - The hall of the Trois Cygnes was renewed by Swiss-German Louis Wicht and in "the lounge, as seen through its entrance, the huge memorable oil — three ample-haunched Ledas swapping lacustrine impressions — had been replaced by a neoprimitive masterpiece showing three yellow eggs and a pair of plumber’s gloves on what looked like wet bathroom tiling."
Wicht/Witch? is: related to an Argentinian city:" He decided that ...he would undertake long travels in South America, Africa, India. As a boy of fifteen (Eric Veen’s age of florescence)...From Manhattan, via Mephisto, El Paso, Meksikansk and the Panama Chunnel, the dark-red New World Express reached Brazilia and Witch (or Viedma, founded by a Russian admiral). There it split into two parts, the eastern one continuing to Grant’s Horn, and the western returning north through Valparaiso and Bogota. On alternate days the fabulous journey began in Yukonsk, a two-way section going to the Atlantic seaboard, while another, via California and Central America, roared into Uruguay. The dark blue African Express began in London and reached the Cape by three different routes, through Nigero, Rodosia or Ephiopia. Finally, the brown Orient Express joined London to Ceylon and Sydney, via Turkey and several Chunnels..."
** - Using simple google tools I got to "The Children of the King a Tale of Southern Italy" by Marion Crawford - fiction.
books.google.com.br/books?isbn=141794532X... I extracted a quote: "Beatrice struck a few chords and then, looking at the Count with half closed eyes, began to sing the pathetic little song of Chiquita. "On dit que l'on the marie/ Tu sais que j'en vais mourir -" Her voice was very sweet and true and there was real pathos in the words...But as she went on, San Miniato noticed first that she repeated the second line..."
The author's name is worth checking: F. Marion Crawford
Using VN-L google, the items were a bit garbled (sometimes no dates, no name...)
1. (2010, september) In Nabokov's story the verses came from "some Parisian drama of love," sung "by an old maiden aunt" of his."...
2. In her 2010 PhD thesis, the translator of Spring in Fialta, Graziela Schneider adds the usual explanatory notes. In one of them, related to the lines in French "On dis que tu te maries, Tu sais que j'en vai mourir -" she collects as possible references: Alfred de Musset's Frederic et Bernerette; Alphonse Daudet's Fromont jeune et Risler aine; a chanson by T. Cazorati (1871-18790 and Alexander Dumas Son in L'Ami des femmes.
3. I understood VN had stopped using images extracted from Greek-mythology in his short-stories after the thirties, but in his novels, such as ADA and in TT these references are quite frequent. I wonder if their occurrence is linked to the suggestive power of their names and actions, after it gets transformed into scientific or everyday words ( such as hymeneus=marriage, for example, as we find in VN's translation of the French song ..."on dit que tu te marries, tu sais que j"en vais mourir" in "Spring in Fialta", linking "hymen and death evoked by the rythm...", cf. Stories, page 415)
*** - "Van was apt to relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of Hell.// ‘Castle True, Castle Bright!’ he now cried, ‘Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!’...‘Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet —’... ‘Oh! Qui me rendra mon Helene —’...‘— et le phalene.’."
Ada exclaims: "‘Je t’emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j’en vais mourir.’." Dorothy Vinelander "gray-caped and mannish-hatted, energetically beckoning with her unfurled umbrella," interrupts them ( Dolly is "mannish-hatted," like Garbo. How does this relate to "Manhattan" and "Tanned Man in a Hat"?). From Vivien Darkbloom's index we gather: p.111. Ma soeur te souvient-il encore: first line of the third sextet of Chateaubriand’s Romance a Helene (‘Combien j’ai douce souvenance’) composed to an Auvergne tune that he heard during a trip to Mont Dore in 1805 and later inserted in his novella Le Dernier Abencerage. The final (fifth) sextet begins with ‘Oh! qui me rendra mon Helene. Et ma montagne et le grand chene’ — one of the leitmotivs of the present novel....
p.407. Olorinus: from Lat. olor, swan (Leda’s lover).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/