Stan K-Bootle [to Jansy and
all*] "[HH]mentions a Madrigal (now lost) composed to honour the “soot black
lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes.” Incidentally, as Victor Fet reminded me
when we met recently at a London Prohibition Meeting, that even “Humbert
Humbert” is a made-up pseudonym; in this case, one presumes, to protect the
guilty? Victor sees a VN in-joke with HH, echoing the many species with
duplicate names (e.g., Bison bison.) Entirely without the use of Wiki/Google, I
came across this proof that Hazel puns are quite ancient:“Thou wilt quarrel with
a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel
eyes.” [Romeo and Julliet, III 1 (22) ]
JM: There's a recording of
Dmitri singing madrigals, I wonder if we'll find among them a
lady's "soot black lashes" (no backlashes...).
Let's not quarrel over a few
spilled aments, ammends and ammendments. Fet's
hypothesis reporting on special duplicate names is intriguing.
I've been recently toiling over an interesting
novel that was lent to me as "a sample of a Japanese Lolita.." We can
find lots of information available on the internet linking Tanizaki and
Nabokov but, in my unlicked unsooty eyes, there's no ground for such a
comparison.* This original book in Japanese ( now available in French,
Portuguese or English versions) made me think about an issue which might
fit in the Nab-List, related to translation. The differences between
French, Spanish or English translations of Russian, Italian or
Japanese authors strikes my amateurish ears as being inevitably bound
to hidden linguistic cultural codes which, depending on the vehicle
of their transposition, strikes different chords in the reader and promotes
wide misunderstandings or sympathies.
Take the "nutcracker" from the famous
Tchaikovsky's ballet suite. In French it became "Casse-noisettes"
(hazelnut-cracker) whereas it was inspired by a German cracker (
which appears in one of ETA Hoffman's eerie tales),whereas the
entire piece, as it impresses on us, has a Russian grand atmosphere (even when
we get it animated by Disney). What kind of a nutcracker did Nabokov have
in mind when he let it drop over an antique blue bowl ("Pnin") or when he
mentions it in "Speak,Memory" ( his family, if recollection serves me right now,
was nicknamed after it). Pnin's certainly is a metal affair with two leggy
handles. The ballet image offers the open maws of a soldier. I'm curious
about what kind of a nutcracker was employed in Nabokov's childhood.. The
experience of reading Chekov in Portuguese is very different from reading him in
English.
Would you all disagree with me that
Russian Nabokov, too, would affect the French readers unlike it does
reach the English
ones?
James Twiggs (to Matt and
alii):..."I’m of the opinion that VN leaves this
an open question and that here, as in so many places in the novel, Ambiguity
(and not Charles the Beloved) reigns supreme--flanked, it should go without
saying, by Irony on the one hand and Pity on the other, with the court jester,
Comedy, dancing wildly in the foreground//Forgive me, please, the fancy metaphor. It’s worth adding that
Nabokovian ambiguity, at least in Pale Fire, is both deeper and wider than the
ambiguity of The Turn of the Screw, in which the possibilities are limited. In
Pale Fire, thanks to the proliferation of clues, allusions, and apparent
storylines, we can never be certain of anything--not even of whether our
uncertainty is justified or not. I think I'm agreeing with Gary Lipon on
this, but we need to remember that the uncertainty interpretation of Pale
Fire goes back a long way."
JM: I agree with Twiggs' emphasis over
Nabokov's "unlimited" ambiguities and parodic intent when representing Kinbote. I'm not as sure
about it in relation to Hazel.
What strikes me is how Shade works over the
life and death of his daughter in his poem, contrasted to Kinbote's
commentaries. Tthe latter seems to be more realistically compassionate than
the father, although what traces in common there are between Hazel and the
commentator to ellicit his pity remains a mistery to me.
btw: Nabokov was also ambiguous about his belief of
poltergeists and ESP phenomena...
..................................................
* -`Naomi ' by
Tanizaki Junichiro is a Japanese classical novel , which has long been unknown
to the western reader . Originally published in 1925,it told a story which could
have happened in the society of Japan riven between traditional values and
westernization trends .Certain analogy can be traced with `Pygmalion '
by Bernard Shaw or Lolita ' by Nabokov , however , `Naomi ' remains a deeply
Japanese book . First and foremost this relates to the theme and
moralistic content. Relations between a young sexually active girl and an older
man demonstrate contrast between traditionalism and modernism ... Naomi ' in a
way continues a tradition of medieval Japanese romantic novel , filled with
sensuality and hidden lust . `Naomi ' is written from the first person , and
this makes the book intimate and meditative . Sentences are short and
laconic...`Naomi ' is a rather empiric description of flow of events , gradually
resulting in each other . Being a book about transition period in Japanese
society `Naomi ' is a ``transition ' book itself . It stands in the centre
between classical and literature of Japan and modern one ..Together with such
masters as Yukio Mishima Tanizaki Junichiro is a guide inside Japanese mentality
.www.mightystudents.com/.../Naomi.Tanizaki.Junichiro.68201
....................
The Japanese Lolita - Jun Ichiro Tanizaki -10
Apr 2010 ... www.epinions.com/...Tanizaki/content_61030174340 BY
Stephen_Murray (excerpts) Tanizaki’s breakthrough novel, A Fool’s Love
(Naomi is the English title), was originally serialized in 1924-25. The
serialization was interrupted by Japanese Imperial censors. What concerned them
about the story is not what most American readers now will find unsettling. They
were concerned about the portrayal of western-style (cheek-to-cheek) dancing.
What will make many American readers queasy about the book now is the
quasi-incestuousness of the primary relationship portrayed [...] From the
fascination with the nymphet’s name onward, there are many similarities
to Nabokov’s Lolita, written more than three decades later. Especially
given the recurrence in later Tanizaki work of the masochism and foot-fetishism
(and attempts to mold younger, poorer women, most notably in Some Prefer
Nettles, as well as his earlier story “The Tattoo Artist” and slightly later
story “Professor Rado” from A Cat, a Man, and Two Women), I am less sure
that Tanizaki’s intent was comic/satiric than I am that Nabokov's was.
Naomi is older when she catches Joji’s eye than Lolita is when she catches
Humbert Humbert’s, and Joji is younger than Humbert. Moreover, fifteen was not
as young in Japan between the World Wars as it is in post-WWII American
conception. (Lolita was twelve on the page, 15-16 in the film versions.) Naomi
had a job in the floating world when she was discovered; she was not a school
girl...Intercourse with Lolita and Naomi seems less important than ownership and
connoisseurship for Humbert and Joji. Both men fail miserably
at owning their young beloveds, and both appear ridiculous in the excess of
their fascination with the young women. Lolita and Naomi have simpler pleasures
and do not take Humbert and Joji nearly as seriously as the men take themselves
and their passion. In the current climate of panic about “child abuse,” some
will be eager to cast Lolita and Naomi as victims, which is an
unfortunate mistake. Suspicion about the reliability of the older male narrators
is certainly justified, but Nabokov and Tanizaki portray the
male lovers as more innocent than what appear to be healthier (as well as
younger) “partners” with simpler tastes, including sexual partners nearer their
own age. Naomi is certainly “spoiled” as a conventional Japanese housewife and
mother, but being one was not in her pre-Joji fate. She does not seem to me to
have been harmed by the perverse devotions of the man who more or less bought
her, and there is no doubt that she ends up dominating him; only his total
surrender keeps her around at all. Joji certainly does not destroy Naomi. It
might be argued that she does not destroy him, either, but his pampering and
ogling her destroys his career, burns through his inheritance, and destroys his
self-esteem...The text is leanly written, though it provokes wondering about the
reliability of its narrator. The style is not at all florid, even if the subject
matter is (de) flowering! Tanizaki was a great prose master. For those able to
suspend moralistic judgements of masochistic males who worship women and
unfamiliar with Tanizaki’s work, I would recommend starting with Seven Japanese
Tales and then moving on to Naomi and The Key...Stephen O. Murray,
2002.
............................
""Unhealthy" is an apt word to
describe the fictional world of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki....(his) early work was
better known for its aesthetic obsessions and outre subject matter - a typical
Tanizaki story would concern something like stealing a girl's used handkerchief
and licking it, or the joys of prostitution in China (John Updike memorably
called him 'the most masculine writer of the 20th century'). Compared to
Mishima, who dealt with characters at least as fucked up, Tanizaki's
protagonists are far less self-conscious, less guilty or conflicted - where a
Mishima character would analyze their neuroses in a dense psychological
monologue, a Tanizaki protagonist is usually enjoying himself too much to be at
all reflective.
Junichiro Tanizaki - Seven Japanese Tales -25 Dec 2006 ...
As you can see, with this story Tanizaki establishes a direct lineage ... This
is almost reminiscent of Nabokov in its subtle convolutions,
...
swiftywriting.blogspot.com/.../junichiro-tanizaki-seven-japanese.html -
............................................
From an essay about Tanisaki
and his 1924 novel "Naomi" (extracts from Tanizaki - Speaking-Japanese.com
- Exploring Japanese Literature ) "Entering
Tokyo Imperial University as a Japanese literature student at the age of
twenty-two, Tanizaki was instrumental in establishing the literary journal
Shinshichô, the third issue of which featured his short story "The Tattooer."
The tale of a tattoo artist who decorates the back of a young girl with a spider
that enables her to dominate the opposite sex, it featured the luxuriant prose,
rich descriptive detail, and risqué subject matter that were to characterize the
writer throughout his career. Tanizaki was taking a deliberate stand against the
literalness of the Naturalists and, according to Gessel, his influences at this
time were Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, and Krafft-Ebbing's studies
in sexual pathology......He married Chiyo Ishikawa in 1915, but soon started
living with her younger sister, Seiko, instead. Tanizaki was so besotted with
all things modern and Western at this stage that he moved to the foreign
district of Yokohama in the early 1920s, and with her occidental looks and movie
star ambitions, Seiko dovetailed more neatly with this obsession than her placid
sister. Seiko is even thought to be the model for the promiscuous female
protagonist of Naomi, Tanizaki's 1924 novel about Taisho Era decadence. [...]After the Great Kanto Earthquake
of 1923, Tanizaki moved his family to Western Japan. This was originally
intended as no more than a temporary expedient, but, accustomed as Tanizaki was
to the relentless modernization of Tokyo, the traditional atmosphere of Kansai
(the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area) seemed dreamlike and exotic by comparison and he was
to spend the rest of his life there... In 1930, Tanizaki shunted his wife Chiyo
off onto a poet friend of his, and in 1931 he was briefly married to a student
little more than half his age, before wedding Matsuko Morita, the ex-wife of a
wealthy Osaka merchant, in 1935. Tanizaki's books from this period—The
Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, The Reed Cutter, A Portrait of
Shunkin—though set in the Japan of several centuries ago tend to deal with the
modern theme of sexual obsession. This enthusiasm for the past found its logical
culmination in Tanizaki's rendering of the eleventh-century The Tale of Genji
into modern Japanese, a massive undertaking that took several years. [...]During the war, Tanizaki worked on
his masterpiece, The Makioka Sisters, a psychological study of three sisters
from a declining Osaka merchant family...Respectability did nothing to affect
his choice of subjects, and later works such as The Diary of a Mad Old Man and
The Key address the paradox of unfading sexual desire in impotent old age.
Tanizaki died in 1965.
"An obsessive concern with 'lust, cleptomania,
sadomasochism, homosexuality, foot-fetishism, coprophilia and Eisenbahnkrankheit
(railroad phobia)' does not constitute a focus upon the concerns of the average
citizen" drily observes Tanizaki biographer Gessel. Sexual deviancy may be
Tanizaki's best known, but it is very far from being his only subject. Aside
from an artificiality worthy of Flaubert or Oscar Wilde, at different times of
his career his works display an insight into female psychology worthy of Henry
James, a playfulness worthy of Nabokov, and a historical
knowledge worthy of Victor Hugo. Perhaps Tanizaki's overriding characteristic as
a writer is his uninhibited and innocent zest for life in all its
aspects."