Alexey Sklyarenko: "She [Lucette]
complained to her governess who, completely misconstuing the whole matter (which
could also be said of her new composition), summoned Van and from her screened
bed, through a reek of embrocation and sweat, told him to refrain from turning
Lucette's head by making of her a fairy-tale damsel in distress." (1.23)
Mlle
Larivière probably uses the phrase tourner la tête. As I pointed out before,
this phrase was used by Pushkin in a four-line French poem written in
1821:
J'ai possédé maîtresse honêtte,
Je la servais comme il
<lui> faut,
Mais je n'ai point tourné de tête, -
Je n'ai
jamais visé si haut.
JM: In the translation of Pushkin's
"French poem" the expression is, as you wrote down, "tourné de
tête" (instead of la"), or was it a typo?
I wonder if Nabokov's original meaning concerning Mlle
Larivière's warning, clearly intended as signifying what A.Sklyarenko has
set into French, is correctly stated in English by
Nabokov.
Do Americans understand "to turn someone's head" as
indicative of making a person feel confused, as is its meaning in
French?
What turns my head are the twin planets Terra and
Anti-terra. What is twinned and shared by
them?