Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020027, Wed, 12 May 2010 22:09:26 -0300

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Re: [NABOKOV-L] Eliot and Double: Errata?
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AS: "He reached out his hand - the hand/ touched the wall [...] Here is a round little knee... and here,/ Here - but why do you laugh beforehand? -/ Here it found itself on the twin hill..." In a previous posting AS noted: "Tirza's двойной курган ("twin hill", and not breasts are meant) somehow reminds me of Brownhill, Ada's school for girls, and its headmistress, Miss Cleft (1.27)."
JM: "vulval cleft." ...is another option for the proffered association to "cleft" - one that doesn't need a rotational motion to reach a female's "twin hills."
RSGwynn: Wouldn't "mons veneris" be applicable here?

JM: Mons veneris, discreet hillocks in opposition to other discrete buttocks?


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btw: I didn't find the precise reference I was looking for, concerning "semblable/double." The sentence, as I loosely recorded it once, reads: "His ideal audience is composed by endless individuals wearing a mask that reproduces his face..."- but this also sounds very strange! It is as if it were enough, for Nabokov, to meet an audience wearing a simulacrum, a "mask of mimicry," with no real eyes to stare back at him.

Kinbote writes about Shade that "His whole being constituted a mask." It might be interesting to compare VN's use of masks in connection to mirrors, mimicry, and truth.

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