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Fw: [NABOKV-L] MR on KQK, Icarus and Freudian cigars
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Dear Matt, and List
After the "Icarus" suffered a first accident, Dreyer rented another car while the Icarus was being fixed. The car is an "Oriole" ( a bird) and is to be found at the begining of Chapter Four in KQK.
CCC's edition, page 798, brings the reference I made to Sci Fiction time-travel: "he pictured it so vividly that for a split second he saw before him his own receding back, saw his hand, saw himself opening the door, and because that sensation was a foray into the future, and it is forbidden to ransack the future, he was swiftly punished... " On the same page we also find the word "Libidettes" ( not used in the Russian original, as D.B.Johnson informed me off-list) : "brought a little silver case with Libidettes ( Vienese cigarettes)"
Now, the links between "automaton", "caroussel/vertigo/spinning", "Doom/Fate" and "death and sexual arousal and extasis" are a bit tricky, but they are clearly there...For starters ( or continuing with last posting's quotations or references on automaton gardener and Red Admirals:)
1. "Dreyer abruptly returned to the mortaility of a winter morning, and with desperate haste, as if he were dealing with an infernal machine, stopped the alarm clock that was about to ring."( 829)
After almost being killed in an accident on a winter night ( Icarus totally smashed and chauffer dead) we find dream versus mortal life ( ie: waking life), plus alarm clock as a "machine infernale" ( title of a play by Cocteau, dealing with Oedipus but, eloquently, also about Deus ex-Machina fateful interventions.)
2 .790: "saturated with sweat, limp with delicious languor, moving with the slow motion of a sleepwalker called back to his rumpled warm pillow, Franz went back to bed... ( connect with automaton and vertigo)
3. "She began teaching him obstinately and fervidly...the specious grace and pace she was teaching him enslaved him totally: now he could no longer disobey the sound whose mystery he had solved. Vertigo became a habitual and pleasurable state, an automaton's somnambulic languor, the law of his existence; now Martha would gently exult...
( a little before we have a penile gnomons: looking down the while with an intent smile, as though following the motions and growth of an already distinct shadow...instead the erect poise ... (843)
4. "However neither did Dreyer, nor Miss Reich ( who had her own dreadful troubles), nor anyone at all in the world ever found out that the lonely and homesick inventor happened to live in the very same room where Franz had spent the night of his arrival; where a great ash tree, now leafless, was visible from the window; and where one could notice, if one looked very carefully, that some minute glass dust [Franz broke his glasses when staying in the room] had become imbedded in the cracks of the linoleum by the washstand. It is significant that Fate should have lodged him there of all places. It was a road that Franz had travelled - and all at once Fate remembered and sent in pursuit this practically nameless man who of course knew nothing of his important assignment, and never found out anything about it, as for that matter no one else ever did, not even old Enricht... The inventor smirked indulgently in response and resumed his explanations...'What was that?', he interrupted. 'The noble slowness of a sleepwalker's progress?' ...'Go on, go on,' Dreyer said, closing his eyes. 'This is pure witchcraft'. " (814-15)
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After the "Icarus" suffered a first accident, Dreyer rented another car while the Icarus was being fixed. The car is an "Oriole" ( a bird) and is to be found at the begining of Chapter Four in KQK.
CCC's edition, page 798, brings the reference I made to Sci Fiction time-travel: "he pictured it so vividly that for a split second he saw before him his own receding back, saw his hand, saw himself opening the door, and because that sensation was a foray into the future, and it is forbidden to ransack the future, he was swiftly punished... " On the same page we also find the word "Libidettes" ( not used in the Russian original, as D.B.Johnson informed me off-list) : "brought a little silver case with Libidettes ( Vienese cigarettes)"
Now, the links between "automaton", "caroussel/vertigo/spinning", "Doom/Fate" and "death and sexual arousal and extasis" are a bit tricky, but they are clearly there...For starters ( or continuing with last posting's quotations or references on automaton gardener and Red Admirals:)
1. "Dreyer abruptly returned to the mortaility of a winter morning, and with desperate haste, as if he were dealing with an infernal machine, stopped the alarm clock that was about to ring."( 829)
After almost being killed in an accident on a winter night ( Icarus totally smashed and chauffer dead) we find dream versus mortal life ( ie: waking life), plus alarm clock as a "machine infernale" ( title of a play by Cocteau, dealing with Oedipus but, eloquently, also about Deus ex-Machina fateful interventions.)
2 .790: "saturated with sweat, limp with delicious languor, moving with the slow motion of a sleepwalker called back to his rumpled warm pillow, Franz went back to bed... ( connect with automaton and vertigo)
3. "She began teaching him obstinately and fervidly...the specious grace and pace she was teaching him enslaved him totally: now he could no longer disobey the sound whose mystery he had solved. Vertigo became a habitual and pleasurable state, an automaton's somnambulic languor, the law of his existence; now Martha would gently exult...
( a little before we have a penile gnomons: looking down the while with an intent smile, as though following the motions and growth of an already distinct shadow...instead the erect poise ... (843)
4. "However neither did Dreyer, nor Miss Reich ( who had her own dreadful troubles), nor anyone at all in the world ever found out that the lonely and homesick inventor happened to live in the very same room where Franz had spent the night of his arrival; where a great ash tree, now leafless, was visible from the window; and where one could notice, if one looked very carefully, that some minute glass dust [Franz broke his glasses when staying in the room] had become imbedded in the cracks of the linoleum by the washstand. It is significant that Fate should have lodged him there of all places. It was a road that Franz had travelled - and all at once Fate remembered and sent in pursuit this practically nameless man who of course knew nothing of his important assignment, and never found out anything about it, as for that matter no one else ever did, not even old Enricht... The inventor smirked indulgently in response and resumed his explanations...'What was that?', he interrupted. 'The noble slowness of a sleepwalker's progress?' ...'Go on, go on,' Dreyer said, closing his eyes. 'This is pure witchcraft'. " (814-15)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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