Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010552, Wed, 10 Nov 2004 12:29:20 -0800

Subject
Fwd: Ada's "marbling"
Date
Body
EDNOTE. I imagine the "marblings" refer to the whorls in hand/finger prints.
"Whorls," in turn, suggests "waltzes." Not sure what to do with that dancing
senorita. Ideas anyone?

----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:43:14 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>


Chapter 17 in Ada I, Penguin page 86, describes Ada´s hands:
"Ada explained to her passionate fortunetellere that the circular marblings she
shared with Turgenev´s Katya, another innocent girl, were called 'waltzes' in
California ( 'because the señorita will dance all night')" .

I was wondering about the word "marblings". Would they be something like the
concentric markings VN makes become similar to marble veins in a stone, or
would they rather be like caluses ( from too much waltzing), i.e, marbles as
those glass-spheres played with in childhood?

----- End forwarded message -----

105.26-27: the circular marblings she shared with Turgenev’s Katya, another
innocent girl: Darkbloom: “Katya: the ingénue in Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and
Children.’” In Ottsy i deti (1861), usually but incorrectly translated as
Fathers and Sons, Katya (Katerina Sergeevna Loktev), the younger sister of the
widow Anna Odintsov, will eventually marry Arkady Kirsanov, the young hero (see
3.03n. and 3.07-08n). In chapter 16 she is introduced: “Everything in her was
still young and fresh: her voice, the down on her whole face, her pink hands
with whitish little circles on her palms” (“Vsyo v ney bylo eshchyo
molodo-zeleno: i golos, i pushok na vsem litse, i rozovye ruki s belovatymi
kruzhkami na ladonyakh”). Later in the chapter, Evgeny Bazarov comments on her
as “fresh, and untouched, and timorous, and quiet, and all you could want”
(“svezho, i netronuto, i puglivo, i molchalivo, i vsyo chto khochesh’”).
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