skb: "even curioser
curiosities:[...] in Irish bars, a 'Virgin Mary' gets you a neat tomato juice
(with optional sauces and celery sticks) sans the vodka."
JM: I once heard that "Bloody
Mary" is not related to Mary Tudor & a red drink, but a
compression of the words "By Our Lady" ( ie. the Virgin Mary). Now, thanks
to you, I learned that vodca makes all the
difference ...
Alexey: Cf. Ada's words to
Dack whom she just took a blood-soaked tampon: "Nekhoroshaya, nekhoroshaya
sobaka," crooned Ada... as she gathered into her arms the now lootless but
completely unabashed bad dog".
JM: I
originally thought that the dach's loot was a tampon, like
Alexey, but now I think that it hints at Ada's
deflowering during the burning barn scene. I return to this now
only because of the sheer coincidence that approached the
word "maiden", as I was told the guillotine is also named in English, and a
lost "maidenhead". But the "polecat" wordplay is certainly not a
coincidence ( Alexey wrote: Ada calls Cordula "Mme Perwitzky:" "I know
somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that's Cordula Tobacco,
alias Mme Perwitsky."[...] Perwitzky is the fur of the rare tiger polecat,
Foetorius sarmaticus" ), neither is the name VN chose for
Tobakov's tobacco companion, Nicot! (a recorded and historical
Charles). An interesting information about VN's playfulness.
J.Aisenberg: "I don't think Nabokov really had a theoretical
scientific brain at all. I've read this Gogol book[...] and never really knew
what he meant with that "four dimension" talk other than the stories being sort
of groovy and sort of fantastic[...] since the e.g.s Nabokov supplied of
Gogolian prose really seemed like tricks of Rhetoric taken to bizzare extremes,
analogies growing into whole independent stories and then fading away, repetivie
modifications for comic grotesque hyper-effects, etc."
JM: I'm not sufficiently bright or informed to be
able to agree or disagree with what you said about VN's
"theoretical scientific brain", but I will stick to my permanent impression that
his is, indeed, a brilliant and disciplined scientific
brain. Stan K-B said: "One must avoid confusing the
concepts of dimension and euclideanism!! VN had in mind, I suppose, the emerging
Theory of General Relativity with its 4-dimensional locally-flat but
globally-curved space-time, since this was, in fact, the first practical
and stunning application of B-L geometries to the
real world." and I trust his judgement, too,
although I'm still baffled by how he connected Einstein's "4-dimensional"
space-time ( geometry applied "to the real world") and VN's
verbal-literary "real" worlds ( and I think I shall die in a
permanent state of bafflement...). Besides, I
love VN's "tricks of Rhetoric taken to bizarre extremes": why not add
these, too? There are no theological or existencial quandaries to fear, are
there?