Arnie Perlstein: [In his lecture on Charles
Dickens Nabokov refers to an example of "oblique description of speech...which,
in turn, reminds me of the paragraph in which Nabokov introduces Jane Austen's
introductions...] "Is that a question as to whether Nabokov writing about
Austen's writing in a way that resonates to something he wrote in Ada could be
just a coincidence? Perhaps if there were quotations of the respective excerpts,
we might be able to make that judgment."
JM: Ada, or Ardor: " ‘I deduce,’ said the
boy, ‘three main facts: that not yet married Marina and her. married sister
hibernated in my lieu de naissance; that Marina had her own Dr Krolik,
pour ainsi dire; and that the orchids came from Demon who preferred to
stay by the sea, his dark-blue great-grandmother’." [...]
"Dr Krolik, our local naturalist, to whom you, Van,
have referred, as Jane Austen might have phrased it, for the sake of rapid
narrative information (you recall Brown, don’t you, Smith?), has determined the
example I brought back from Sacramento to Ardis, as the Bear-Foot, B,E,A,R, my
love, not my foot or yours, or the Stabian flower girl’s — an allusion, which
your father, who, according to Blanche, is also mine, would understand like
this’ (American finger-snap)."
Nabokov's example, from Charles Dickens, dwells on a girl named
Ada*. In his novel "Ada," an entire paragraph seems to employ "oblique
descriptions of speech...to speed up or to concentrate a mood" (he'd exemplified
with CD's Ada), like Austen's "rapid narrative information" (now used
to bring up Dr. Krolik in connection to a Dr. Lapiner.)
.........................................................................................................................................................................
* - The entire example (Bowers, p.114-123) Oblique Description of
Speech: "This is a further development of Samuel
Johnson and Jane Austen's manner, with a greater number of samples of speech
within the description...(It) is frequently used, in less eccentric characters,
to speed up or to concentrate a mood, sometimes accompanied, as here, by lyrical
repetition: Esther is persuading the secretly married Ada to go with her to
visit Richard: " 'My dear,' said I, ' you have not had any difference
with Richard since I have been so much away?'
" 'No, Esther.'
" 'Not heard of him, perhaps?' said I.
" 'Yes, I have heard of him,' said Ada.
"Such tears in her eyes and such love in her face. I could not make my
darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said. No, Ada thought I had
better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada thought she had better
go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go now. Well, I could not
understand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love in her
face!"
** -
8.30-31 as the Bear-Foot . . . not my foot or yours, or the
Stabian flower girl's
The so-called "Primavera" by Stabiae in the
national Museum of Naples. See
Figure
B. (Cf.
vnjapan.org/main/ada/ada1.html
)Ada's reference to the Stabian girl's FEET reminded me of a
bas-relief that was one of Freud's favorites, the Gradiva (Latin:
The woman who walks) "a neo-Attic Roman bas-relief in the manner of Greek works
of the fourth century BCE, depicting a young robed woman who lifts the hems of
her skirts to stride forward. The relief is in the Vatican Museums.This
sculpture was the basis for the 1903 novel Gradiva by German writer Wilhelm
Jensen. Sigmund Freud famously analysed the novel...in his 1907 study ("Der Wahn
und die Träume in W. Jensens Gradiva", 1907, or in translation: "Delusion and
Dream in W. Jensen's 'Gradiva'"), a unique example of his psychoanalysing a
fictional character. Freud interpreted Hanhold's fetish as being a substitution
for unresolved feelings for his childhood playmate, Zoe Bertgang
[i.e: Gradiva]. Freud owned a copy of this relief, which he joyfully beheld
in the Vatican Museums in 1907; it can be found on the wall of his study (the
room where he died) in 20 Maresfield Gardens, London—now the Freud
Museum.Salvador Dalí used the name "Gradiva" as a nickname for his wife, Gala
Dalí....(wikipedia). Feet and shoes are ever present references in "Ada" (and in
other VN's novels, particularly in TT and Pnin).