Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0025359, Fri, 2 May 2014 07:05:13 +0000

Subject
Re: ... in Ada and Colette: patches
Date
Body
As for the use of "Westinghousian"....

Westinghouse manufactured railway breaking and signalling equipment.

The reference is almost certainly to the sound of the Westinghouse air pumps attached to some locomotives to operate the brakes.

Barrie Akin




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Jansy Mello <jansy.mello@OUTLOOK.COM> wrote:



From an recent quote: “Upon being questioned in Demon's dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies”

JM: Marina’s operatic laughing became adverbial (“trillingly”) and, for my ears, surprising. It would have passed unnoticed by me had it not been isolated in one of AS’s selections.

I skimmed through ADA, curious about its adjectives (iridal, for example, as heavy as TOoL’s “auroral” ) and adverbs, but I chose a short-story (First Love) for an initial sampling.

How about ”Westinghousian”? (”Presently, the train stopped with a long-drawn Westinghousian sigh.”) Are we thinking of steam engines only? Electric appliances such as those ancient rumbling fridges*?

What is uncommon and exciting in “drably” and “waggly”?

“I knew that those people had come all the way from Paris in their blue-and-yellow limousine (a fashionable adventure in those days) but had drably sent Colette with her dog and governess by an ordinary coach train. The dog was a female fox terrier with bells on her collar and a most waggly behind.”

…………………………………………………………………………………….

* - “ and he pants and he gasps and he rasps and he wheezes:

ice is the solid form when the water freezes;

[ ] and I wonder how long

it will rumble and shudder and crackle and pound…”

(1942, “The Refrigerator Awakes”)

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