Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0014152, Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:31:44 +0100

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R: [NABOKV-L] R: [NABOKV-L] abstruse commentaries, Ovid and Ardors
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Jansy writes: (1) ‘please forward the commentaries’

Well, you wish to waste some time but look at Amy Richlin’s ‘The Gardens of Priapus’ 1983 pp.158f.

(2)- I'm curious to learn if the title "Ada, or Ardor" bears the same substantive sense of "ardor" etc.:

But Really! Surely Nabokov is thinking rather of the Japanese (no doubt the Korean in Pale Fire had learnt that language under the Japanese occupation) homophones and channeled the info to Nabokov), respectively Ada (徒) ‘void, emptiness, vanity, futility’; Ada (仇) ‘foe, harm, evil’; Ada (阿娜) ‘coquettish’? (If the characters don’t appear, and you are curious, convert to Unicode)

oversize ardors evidently is Byron’s ‘ardour much increased’ (Don Juan 7. XLIX line 6 , in a context where a Russian Souvaroff is named as ‘teaching his recruits to use the bayonet’), attributed to a boy excited by the prospects of spoil. Shakespeare uses ardour not directly of a sexual organ, but as its enflamed, perhaps engorged, emotional expression. As when Ferdinand in the Tempest (Act 4,Sc.1, 55-6), speaking to Prospero, says

The white cold virgin snow upon my heart
Abates the ardour of my liver.

The liver of course is one of the seats of sexual passion. Prospero had just advised not ‘to give dalliance/Too much the rein’ and ‘rein’ here is possibly a double entendre (though Partridge in Shakespeare’s Bawdy ignores it, as does Frankie Rubenstein in her ‘Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and Their Significance’ (1984, 2nd ed.1989). Housman has precisely this passage in mind when in the Shropshire Lad (30) when he wrote:-

‘Through their reins in ice and fire

Fear contended with desire.’

Housman knew not only that the ‘reins’ are kidneys, another seat of the passions,. but that, via Greek usage, where the word ‘nephroi’, kidneys, was a euphemism for testicles, (Henderson, The Maculate Muse 1983 p.125), reins qua kidneys took on, in learned usage, the denotative sense of ‘testicles’, and, served metaphorically for the idea of physical desire. Shakespeare’s proficiency in Latin is much discussed. One doubts that he could have known that ‘renes’ (kidneys) has a singular sense in the singular. In Ausonius’ epigrams (No.14) there is a line (utere rene tuo: casta puella anus est) which Adams takes as a euphemism for cunnus (The Latin Sexual Vocabulary 1983 p.92). I should add however that Ausonius’ most recent editor R.P.H.Green (The Works of Ausonius 1991 p.386) argues that Avantius’ emendation ‘vere’ represents the more probable meaning, which destroys the innuendo. But Green, and Avantius, and, I gather, everyone else bar your humble and filthy-minded servant,. has overlooked Petronius’s Satyricon (35.4) ‘super geminos testiculos ac rienes’, where ‘twins’ is a calque on the Greek hoi didumoi, with the same sense, and rienes strengthens the genital allusion. That the same word might allude to cunnus and testiculos is not problematical. As we have seen, Shakespeare has a similar double sense in his use of ‘will’, and indeed, ‘reason panders to the will’/when the compulsive ardour gives the charge’, as Hamlet informs his mother in his bitter speech on her seamy sexuality (Act 3, Scene 4,80,78)

Regards

Peter Dale
----- Original Message -----
From: jansymello
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 1:11 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] R: [NABOKV-L] abstruse commentaries, Ovid and Ardors


Peter Dale was kind enough to note that "it's not quite appropriate to expatiate on this aspect in this forum. But the line is 'parva vehatur equo' Ars Amatoria Liber 3.777. If you are curious the relevant commentaries on that magnificent poem will fill in the picture."

Thank you, Peter, please forward the commentaries in case they'll not require any special verbal skills from me ( I only wondered if Ovid's Ars Amatoria was mainly addressed to a specific gender.)

Still treading on delicate ground I would like to ask you about the meaning of the word "ardor", in the sense Kinbote employed it in Pale Fire ( euphemisms are welcome). I'm curious to learn if the title "Ada, or Ardor" bears the same substantive sense of "ardor":

"Gradus was also unaware that the ombrioles Lavender collected (and I am sure Joe will not resent this indiscretion) combined exquisite beauty with highly indecent subject matter — nudities blending with fig trees, oversize ardors, softly shaded hindercheeks, and also a dapple of female charms."

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