Lyrate lyric bodies have the suppleness of
Lollobrigida's wasp-waist. This is why I set myself the task of recovering
data on "King Queen Knave" ( starred by Gina L.)*, tibits about movies and
the novel.
In Nabokov's Dark Cinema (Alfred Appel) we
find the following dialogues:
"... While scripting Lolita in Hollywood,
the Nabokovs attended a dinner party at David Selznick's luxurious house. Billy
Wilder was there, and Gina Lollobrigida, too.
"She speaks excellent French,"
says Nabokov.
"It wasn't that good," interupts Mrs. Nabokov.
They were
also introduced to a tall, rugged fellow.
"And what do you do ?" inquired
Nabokov.
"I'm in pictures," answered John Wayne ..."
These were mentioned by Brian Boyd (AA,p.407) a little
differently: "At another party Nabokov met an attractive brunette to whom he
spoke French, and told her she had a wonderful Paris accent. "Parisian, hell,"
replried Gina Lollobrigida. "It's Roman French." He did not always put his
foot in it..."
The Kyoto circle finds Gina ( in her movie
"Trapeze") in "Ada" - perhaps linked to KQK's
"Gutter-Perchers"?
CF: 51.22-23: the flying Italian
lady
She might be associated with the image of Gina Lollobrigida, a movie
actress from Italy, in Trapeze (1956). vnjapan.org/main/ada/ada2.html .
In the amusing translation I first read KQK ("imps" became
"diabetes", a misprint of "diabretes") "omoplates" abound, although in
English they are mostly "shoulder blades", untubbed and dry, even in the
sentence I'd been looking for: "Martha threw off her orange
peignoir, and as she drew back her elbows to adjust a necklace, her angelically
lovely bare shoulder blades came together like folding wings"
KQK has many harlequinades, caroussel headaches and spinnings. There are
arab slave-traders and hindu princes, conjurors like
Menetek-El-Pharsin, ridiculous masked Dreyer popping into Franz's
lovemaking to Martha. Ridiculous contorsions (like old Enricht on all fours in
front of a cheval glass). Ch. 7 has a Flora reference: "The reason Martha did not want a car...to lessons in rhythmic
inclinations and gesticulations ("Flora, accept these lilies' or "Let us unfold
our veils in the wind')...By taking these precautions...she transposed or
curtailed or missed altogether those delightful contortions and scattering of
invisible flowers..."
The familiar iterations are revealing: "its
hubbub comprised the hollow hum of irksome human thoughts" or the amusing
lapsus: "I shall get new spectables. I mean
respectacles."
Franz, like Flora's Julian, exhibits an "endearing contrast between his thin body and one cocked part of
it, shortish but exceptionally thick."
.....................................................................................................................................................
*
King, queen, knave
Author:Jerzy Skolimowski; Gina Lollobrigida; David Niven;
John Moulder-Brown; Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov; All authors
Embassy Home
Entertainment, 1984.