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Re: THOUGHTS: Kim Beauharnais in ADA and other Kims
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Victor Fet (excerpts): Once we started on kimology, let's recall that: (a) Kipling's "Kim" promotes the concept of Great Game of influence between England and Russia spheres, quite an Antiterran geoconcept if one looks closer (see Alexei's treatise on Scots/Scandinavians);(b) In 1950 movie "Kim", the main adult role of Makhbub Ali was played by Erroll Flynn who, by the way, only two years before that was Don Juan in "Adventures of Don Juan"; (c) Kim was a popular male acronymic name in 1920s Russia, deciphered as Kommunisticheskij Internatsional Molodezhi (The Communist Youth Internatonal, a section of Comintern. One of the Communist youth's desired features is, of course, spying and informing (see classical Pavlik Morozov story of 1930s); in this sense Kim B. is a Soviet 'young pioneer' in "Ada"'s Amerussian world; (d) another Kim (nothing to do with Kipling) is a common Korean surname, a North Korean dictator when "Ada" was written (a "Khan Soso" type), and still is; spying and informing is a child's first duty in this society as well as in Khan Soso's; (e) finally (and everything to do with Kipling!), Kim is an obvious reverse of Mik, the famous heroic African boy of Nikolai Gumilev's long poem "Mik" (1914).
Susan E. Sweeney:In a 1965 interview, VN lists Kipling among the writers he was especially fond of as a boy: "between 8 and 14 I used to enjoy tremendously the romantic productions--romantic in the large sense--of such people as Conan Doyle, Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde, and other authors who are essentially writers for young people" (SO 46-57).
JM: I had been sceptical about Kipling's "Kim" inspiring the choice for Kim Beauharnais but, after V.Fet's explanation and Beth's information on young VN's favorite "romantic" writers, the hypothesis started to make sense. I don't remember Kipling's plot, but "Kim's Game" was already a favorite among Brazilian Girl Scouts, after a dedicated Mrs. Juliette Low extracted the idea from RK's novel to apply it to the international Boy Scout movement, founded by Lord Baden Powell. Kim's game reproduces some of the talents expected from VN readers ( after finding an apparently random object, or its image, connect it to a specific story & vice-versa), but applying this "game" in ADA would have been "childish", unless intended to illustrate how sentimental souvenir-pictures*, collected to engender or substitute true reminiscences, also served devious uses, such as spying and voyeurism.
*- I was informed that "Scouting" was developped after B.Powell realized that English boys were innocently obeying the tactics of "fair play" while fighting a real war. He intended to develop awareness and survival abilities in the young, while simultaneously cultivating high ethical standards and the ideals about "the Brotherhood of Man", an ideal also cultivated in the field of literature and music by Nabokov's cousin, Nicholas Nabokov, to approach American-Soviet artists and as a sort of Cold War political propaganda.
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Susan E. Sweeney:In a 1965 interview, VN lists Kipling among the writers he was especially fond of as a boy: "between 8 and 14 I used to enjoy tremendously the romantic productions--romantic in the large sense--of such people as Conan Doyle, Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde, and other authors who are essentially writers for young people" (SO 46-57).
JM: I had been sceptical about Kipling's "Kim" inspiring the choice for Kim Beauharnais but, after V.Fet's explanation and Beth's information on young VN's favorite "romantic" writers, the hypothesis started to make sense. I don't remember Kipling's plot, but "Kim's Game" was already a favorite among Brazilian Girl Scouts, after a dedicated Mrs. Juliette Low extracted the idea from RK's novel to apply it to the international Boy Scout movement, founded by Lord Baden Powell. Kim's game reproduces some of the talents expected from VN readers ( after finding an apparently random object, or its image, connect it to a specific story & vice-versa), but applying this "game" in ADA would have been "childish", unless intended to illustrate how sentimental souvenir-pictures*, collected to engender or substitute true reminiscences, also served devious uses, such as spying and voyeurism.
*- I was informed that "Scouting" was developped after B.Powell realized that English boys were innocently obeying the tactics of "fair play" while fighting a real war. He intended to develop awareness and survival abilities in the young, while simultaneously cultivating high ethical standards and the ideals about "the Brotherhood of Man", an ideal also cultivated in the field of literature and music by Nabokov's cousin, Nicholas Nabokov, to approach American-Soviet artists and as a sort of Cold War political propaganda.
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/