A. Sklyarenko: "From Manhattan, via Mephisto, El Paso, Meksikansk and the Panama
Chunnel, the dark-red New World Express reached Brazilia and Witch (or Viedma,
founded by a Russian admiral). (2.2)...Ved'ma ("The Witch," 1886) is a story by
Chekhov...."
Jansy Mello: The
demonic,mephistophelic, satanic, bewitched, devilish allusions continue to
puzzle me. What could have been VN's point in bringing them up so insistently?
When, recently, Sklyarenko brought up from LATH the name of a fictional location
in Europe ( Diablonnet ) I couldn't help associating it to "diablo" (devil
in Spanish).
While roaming in search for other links I came across a paper online
related to Nabokov's metaphors and metonymy in Transparent
Things.* While she develops her theories,
she includes LATH's "Diablonnet" suggestion of the Russian
"yabloni" (apples ) and connects the town to a place in the Swiss mountains,
"les Diablerets", before proceding with the "forbidden fruit" associations to
"sin." (the article is in German, so I haven't read it with the exception
of its first lines - but it looks promising to me due
to its psychoanalytic references and what seems to be a wordplay
related to "madness" and "displacement" right at the title
"Ver-rückungen..".)
It just occurred to me that (if?) VN seldom mentions "wizzards,"
thus favoring "conjuror", "magician" and
"enchanter" instead. And I wonder why, among various references
to Goethe's works, I cannot remember a single suggestive indication of his
"Faust" (please correct me anyone if I'm way off the mark qua demonic
encounters)
..........................................................
*
- Rebecca Haubrich- Brown University, German Studies, Graduate
Student: "Kryptische Ver-rückungen. Zu Metonymie und Metapher als linguistische
Symptome in Nabokovs 'Transparent Things'."