-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"



SEE BELOW -- DN
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
    Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:07:43 -0300
    From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
 Subject: Re:  Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"
      To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,

Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can be. I saw
Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the   "hunted enchanters"
inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was not in his screen-play.


Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a reference to a Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov himself, who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but still strong old oak". Then I became curious about the word "Rast". The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember,Van!
- in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast...)

In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum "rake" from "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing. Google took me to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes. In it there was Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn,  een toonladder (makam) in de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.

I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the Curds, to the Turks [IF I AM NOT MISTAKEN, IT'S A SCALE IN TURKISH MUSIC -- DN] and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".

I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the reference is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what of the four cows and the lad in rags?

"as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare"

Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called Peter de
Rast?   The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is produced
by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.

Jansy




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  I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the hotel is called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey but (as far as I can
see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose idea it was?

  Anthony Stadlen

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