Subject
Fw: [NABOKV-L] [ NABOKOV-L] Ada,
Artemisia and Lucette's suicide ("dracunculus")
Artemisia and Lucette's suicide ("dracunculus")
From
Date
Body
A. Sklyarenko: I notice that шулер, Russian for "card-sharper," is explicitly, not only implicitly, present in Ada: "Mr Plunkett had been, in the summer of his adventurous years, one of the greatest shuler's, politely called 'gaming conjurers,' both in England and America." (1.28) Because in his "Annotations" Boyd doesn't mention uncle Ruka who, like Van, managed to cheat a cheater in a poker game, I deduce that the Russian passage I quoted in my previous post isn't in Conclusive Evidence either. It is only in "Другие берега" and proves inaccessible not to Jansy alone...
Jerry Friedman [ to JM "somebody had said that triplets and heraldic dracunculi often occurred in trilingual families..."]...Just as something that someone might find to lead somewhere. I think it's much more likely that "spigotty" is supposed to suggest the derogatory "spiggotty" as well as "spigot".By the way, I didn't remember it; I searched the archives for "Artemisia"...All very tempting....[ JM:Aren't we being misled by Artemisia/Ada to be drawn away from the much simpler link: "dracunculus/draoncle/festering wound"? ] I think "heraldic" suggests that it's not that simple, although the festering wound is probably part of it (and "draguncel", swelling of the lymph nodes in the groin, could be specifically relevant)...Incidentally, I feel sure the mythical Artemisia was named after Artemis, a virgin goddess...
JM: Biographical facts are often closer to police records than to art, and most discomfitting (like the Merzky- Mirskii exchanges)*.
I think that there's something "Nabokovian" in google-searching ( it may be poised bt. modern and supermodern times), for the retrieval of past information (Ada/Artemisia/Artemis), will serve to recycle projects or circumstances ( Dracunculi/Rankle) and turn them into parody ( Uncle Ruka's and Van's card tricks).
When historical acuity is set in an atemporal dimension in the closed space of a novel, that is, moving from "Draonle-Ruka," from VN's personal world, onto "Lucette/Artemis," as a wound turned into fiction, we get pastiche. And Art - to be able to recover "the wayside murmur of a hidden theme" in a dimension (recently described by Anne Hathaway in one of Sandy Klein's postings about Wonderland Alice) of "something universally specific."
........................
* a)Does anybody remember the source of the following Nabokov's words: "merzky Mirsky"? (D. Mirsky was a Russian emigre literary scholar and the author of great "The History of Russian Literature" who left his position at Oxford, returned to the Soviet Russia and perished in a prison or camp). Sincerely yours, Mikhail Efimov
(b) It is really odd. Nabokov highly appreciated D.Mirsky's History. I can't recall any negativity towards him. Plus "merzky" is not in active vocabulary of Nabokov. Vladimir Mylnikov
(c) I agree with Volodya. I can't recall anything negative VN said or wrote about Mirsky. Brian Boyd
(d) From VN's letter to Gleb Struve (December 2, 1932): "А МЕРЗКИЙ МИРСКИЙ, кажется, приезжает в Париж" (Zvezda, 2004, No.4, p.150) See also other negative remarks about Mirsky in previous letters and my annotations to them. Actually "Prince Merzkii" was an old derogative nickname of Mirsky. Alexander Dolinin
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
Jerry Friedman [ to JM "somebody had said that triplets and heraldic dracunculi often occurred in trilingual families..."]...Just as something that someone might find to lead somewhere. I think it's much more likely that "spigotty" is supposed to suggest the derogatory "spiggotty" as well as "spigot".By the way, I didn't remember it; I searched the archives for "Artemisia"...All very tempting....[ JM:Aren't we being misled by Artemisia/Ada to be drawn away from the much simpler link: "dracunculus/draoncle/festering wound"? ] I think "heraldic" suggests that it's not that simple, although the festering wound is probably part of it (and "draguncel", swelling of the lymph nodes in the groin, could be specifically relevant)...Incidentally, I feel sure the mythical Artemisia was named after Artemis, a virgin goddess...
JM: Biographical facts are often closer to police records than to art, and most discomfitting (like the Merzky- Mirskii exchanges)*.
I think that there's something "Nabokovian" in google-searching ( it may be poised bt. modern and supermodern times), for the retrieval of past information (Ada/Artemisia/Artemis), will serve to recycle projects or circumstances ( Dracunculi/Rankle) and turn them into parody ( Uncle Ruka's and Van's card tricks).
When historical acuity is set in an atemporal dimension in the closed space of a novel, that is, moving from "Draonle-Ruka," from VN's personal world, onto "Lucette/Artemis," as a wound turned into fiction, we get pastiche. And Art - to be able to recover "the wayside murmur of a hidden theme" in a dimension (recently described by Anne Hathaway in one of Sandy Klein's postings about Wonderland Alice) of "something universally specific."
........................
* a)Does anybody remember the source of the following Nabokov's words: "merzky Mirsky"? (D. Mirsky was a Russian emigre literary scholar and the author of great "The History of Russian Literature" who left his position at Oxford, returned to the Soviet Russia and perished in a prison or camp). Sincerely yours, Mikhail Efimov
(b) It is really odd. Nabokov highly appreciated D.Mirsky's History. I can't recall any negativity towards him. Plus "merzky" is not in active vocabulary of Nabokov. Vladimir Mylnikov
(c) I agree with Volodya. I can't recall anything negative VN said or wrote about Mirsky. Brian Boyd
(d) From VN's letter to Gleb Struve (December 2, 1932): "А МЕРЗКИЙ МИРСКИЙ, кажется, приезжает в Париж" (Zvezda, 2004, No.4, p.150) See also other negative remarks about Mirsky in previous letters and my annotations to them. Actually "Prince Merzkii" was an old derogative nickname of Mirsky. Alexander Dolinin
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/