Dear List,
In "Lolita", when HH goes away to buy bananas,
and leaves his nymphet alone in the cabin, we find the following
lines:
"The girl I had seen on my way to town was now loaded with linen
and engaged in helping a misshapen man whose big head and coarse features
reminded me of the "Bertoldo" character in low Italian
comedy. They were cleaning the cabins of which there was a dozen or so on
Chestnut Crest, all pleasantly spaced amid the copious verdure."
Using the internet I discovered the story of an Italian jester:
"Late in the 16th century appeared 'Le Sottilissime Astuzi di Bertoldo'
which is one of the most remarkable books ever written about a jester. Its
author, Guilio Cesare Croci, was a street musician of Bologna. He was aided in
his authorial work, accord ing to this edition, by various members of the famous
Accademia della Crusca. It is a brilliant comic romance giving an account of the
appearance of the peasant Bertoldo, wonderful in ugliness,
good sense, and wit at the court of Alboin King of the
Lombards."
At the end of this reference there was a curious comment by Thomas
Fuller: "When you see a jester the fool is not far off" and this might
be the only thing VN wanted to call our attention to when indicating
the relationship between HH and Quilty ( who "tailed" whom like a
jester and the fool, who left behind mocking "cues"?).
A few weeks ago I had asked the list about the non-musical
variations for the term "coda", if we can accept that its meaning can
extend to the words "tail" and "queue", Quilty, "cue", "Q" and to a biography written by Miss
Vivian Darkbloom ( Cf. Lolita).
I have seen "coda" mentioned by Nabokovian
scholars in its more innocent acception ( Don B. Johnson, Eric Naiman).
Since the the word "tail" ( and not
"coda") is sexually suggestive in Portuguese, I wondered if the series of
attached meanings would also apply to English and if VN could have
employed them in "Lolita".
I finally discovered an
indirect confirmation (of sorts), but its came from a paragraph
in "Ada" where there is a play with one of the erotic senses
of "queue":
"he continued to fondle the flow of her hair, and to massage and rumple her
nightdress, not daring yet to go under and up, daring, however, to mold her
nates until, with a little hiss, she sat down on his hand and her heels, as the
burning castle of cards collapsed. She turned to him and next moment he was
kissing her bare shoulder, and
pushing against her like that soldier
behind in the queue.
First time I
hear about him. I thought old Mr Nymphobottomus had been my only
predecessor.
Last
spring. Trip to town. French theater matinée. Mademoiselle had mislaid the
tickets. The poor fellow probably thought ‘Tartuffe’ was a tart or a
stripteaser.
Ce qui
n’est pas si bête, au fond. Which was not so
dumb after all."
Jansy Mello
PS: Thanks to A. Stadlen for the correction
of my mistake concerning the "through a glass, darkly", an epistle of
St.Paul in the New Testament, and also for the
item on T.S.Eliot's conversion - since I had
assumed he had become a Catholic (indeed, his poems suggest an
eclectic view of
religion).
J.