Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002042, Fri, 25 Apr 1997 16:24:07 -0700

Subject
Re: Query: chuckrick / xuxrik in Invitation to a Beheading (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. Can some kind soul give me the chapter (or edition and
page number for the chuckrick / xuxrik citation? I have just skimmed the
notes in Sasha Dolinin's Russian edition of _Invitation..._ and Dieter
Zimmer's notes to his own German translation without find anything on the
matter. The ultimate answer may lie with Dmitri Nabokov who did the
English translation or in VN's annotations on DN's draft which is in the Nabokov
Archive of the Library of Congress's Manuscript Division. Faute de mieux,
I offer the "bird" theory
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 13:29:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Re: Query: chuckrick / xuxrik in Invitation to a Beheading (fwd)

Who, if not French, should know something about eating "little fried
birds"?!!! I checked my Dal' too, and I think Don draws the right
conclusion. Among other things, Russian "dandy" came from "shchegol" or
goldfinch apparently because of the little fancy patch of hair on the top
of its head. I even vaguely remember an 18th century drawing where dandies
were portrayed as oversized goldfinches with hair like that. Khukhrik,
according to Dal', does come from Khukhrit' which is a Novgorod dialect
word for hair. I suspect whoever eats it, plucks out the hair from the top
of the poor bird's head -- but, then, who knows?

Galya Diment

On Fri, 25 Apr 1997, Donald Barton Johnson wrote:

> From: Jeff Edmunds <jhe@psulias.psu.edu>
> Neither Webster's 3rd nor even the OED has 'chuckrick.' Don Johnson's theory
> that it is some type of game bird seems plausible enough, especially the
> redshank since the eater in question is sporting red silk pants (or is
> memory deceiving me--I don't have my ITAB handy). The French translation of
> the novel, Invitation au supplice, whose accuracy I cannot otherwise vouch
> for, gives "gaufres frites", or fried waffles. Did the French translator
> (Jarl Priel) know something we don't? Or did gobbling waffles simply strike
> him as more palatable than eating little fried birds?
>