Subject
Re: Ada's erotic geography
From
Date
Body
Laurence Hochard "... You examined and fingered
my groove ..."/ Lucette couldn't find the word, but Van, who was not averse to
studying anatomy, could find the thing .../ " ... you and she came
simultaneously..."/ and enjoy it ! / But how poignant behind the erotic
comedy the image of little Lucette!"
Jansy: "I suppose that Laurece Hochard.is responding to your
description of Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina," when Kitty and Levin play
with what you said is a Russian version of "Flavita" ( is it?). He selects
sentences about the game, Van's fingering Lucett's "groove," and notes "how
poignant behind the erotic comedy is the image of little Lucette,"
No, I simply wanted to highlight VN's "writing strategy": How he makes the uncomfortable but delighted reader share Van's and Ada's coarse (however sophisticated it may be) sensual avidity, regardless of its consequences. Once the reader has realized how far his complicity has gone (often after a second reading), he can hardly adopt a moralistic stance (if he has some intellectual honesty); this Nabokovian way of involving the reader in his characters' actions -through seemingly absent, actually well-hidden in full view! authorial comment- also enables him as an author to avoid the moralistic stance he loathes.
Also, all these outrageous double-entendres in Lucette's speech, in addition to being funny, reveal her helpless hysteria, due to her early exposure to Van's and Ada's sensuality.
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 03:29:53 +0300
From: skylark1970@MAIL.RU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Ada's erotic geography
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
'- I got stuck with six Buchstaben in the last
round of a Flavita game. Mind you, I was eight and had not studied anatomy, but
was doing my poor little best to keep up with two Wunderkinder. You
examined and fingered my groove and quickly redistributed the haphazard sequence
which made, say, LIKROT or ROTIKL and Ada flooded us both with her raven silks
as she looked over our heads, and when you had completed the rearrangement, you
and she came simultaneously, si je puis le mettre comme ça (Canady
French), came falling on the black carpet in a paroxysm of incomprehensible
merriment; so finally I quietly composed ROTIK ('little mouth') and was left
with my own cheap initial. I hope I've thoroughly got you mixed up, Van, because
la plus laide fille au monde peut donner beaucoup plus qu'elle n'a, and
now let us say adieu, yours ever.'
'Whilst the machine is to him,' murmured
Van.
'Hamlet,' said the assistant lecturer's brightest
student. (Ada, 2.5)
The anatomical term little Lucette did not know and therefore could not
compose in a Flavita game was klitor (clitoris).
In his poem Evropa (Europe, 1919) included in Rossiya
raspyataya (The Crucified Russia) Max Voloshin affirms that Europe's
"maternal organs" (maternie organy), her uterus and clitoris
(pokhotnik), are in the Archipelago (the Aegean Sea):
Полярным льдам уста её открыты,
У пояса,
среди сапфирных влаг,
Как пчельный рой у чресел Афродиты,
Раскинул острова
Архипелаг.
Сюда ведут страстных желаний тропы,
Здесь матерние органы
Европы,
Здесь, жгучие дрожанья затая, -
В глубоких влуминах укрытая
стихия,
Чувствилище и похотник ея...
For his floramors (palatial brothels in Eric Veen's essay
"Villa Venus: an Organized Dream") David van Veen used marble columns dredged
from classical seas:
He began with rural England and coastal America,
and was engaged in a Robert Adam-like composition (cruelly referred to by local
wags as the Madam-I'm-Adam House), not far from Newport, Rodos Island, in a
somewhat senile style, with marble columns dredged from classical seas and still
encrusted with Etruscan oyster shells - when he died from a stroke while helping
to prop up a propylon. (2.3)
(Rhodos is the Greek
name of Rhodes, one of the largest islands in the Archipelago famous for
its Colossus. Newport is a city in Rhode Island, USA.)
From Ada's letter to
Van: All this you are free to diagnose as a
case of advanced erotomania, but there is more to it, because there exists a
simple cure for all my maux and throes and that is an extract
of scarlet aril, the flesh of yew, just only yew... Take the fastest flying
machine you can rent straight to El Paso, your Ada will be waiting for you
there, waving like mad, and we'll continue, by the New World Express, in a suite
I'll obtain, to the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant's Horn, a Villa in
Verna, my jewel, my agony. (2.1) It seems to me
that "the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant's Horn" is America's
male organ.
Note that Ada read a
three-volume History of Prostitution at the age of ten or eleven,
between Hamlet and Captain Grant's Microgalaxies.
(1.35)
pokhotnik = p + okhotnik (hunter; in a
letter of October 30, 1833, to his wife Pushkin uses the feminine form of
okhotnik, okhotnitsa, in the sense "lover,
enthusiast" and in a very frivolous context; in the same letter Pushkin chides
Natalie for her coquetry and calls Ninon Lenclos staraya kurva, "old
whore"; poets will be disappointed to learn that okhotnik and
pokhotnik do not rhyme)
samogon krovi + on = mnogo vina
skoro (Samogon krovi is the title of
Voloshin's article on death penalty included "The Crucified Russia", see my
previous posts; superstitious Russians often called the devil on, "he"; mnogo vina
skoro - Russ., a lot of vodka soon)
Samogon krovi (the unauthorized spilling of
blood) in the 20th century Russia brings to mind another Archipelago, the
GULAG.
In 1918, when the Nabokovs lived in the Crimea, VN met
Voloshin in Yalta.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Google Search the archive
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
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my groove ..."/ Lucette couldn't find the word, but Van, who was not averse to
studying anatomy, could find the thing .../ " ... you and she came
simultaneously..."/ and enjoy it ! / But how poignant behind the erotic
comedy the image of little Lucette!"
Jansy: "I suppose that Laurece Hochard.is responding to your
description of Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina," when Kitty and Levin play
with what you said is a Russian version of "Flavita" ( is it?). He selects
sentences about the game, Van's fingering Lucett's "groove," and notes "how
poignant behind the erotic comedy is the image of little Lucette,"
No, I simply wanted to highlight VN's "writing strategy": How he makes the uncomfortable but delighted reader share Van's and Ada's coarse (however sophisticated it may be) sensual avidity, regardless of its consequences. Once the reader has realized how far his complicity has gone (often after a second reading), he can hardly adopt a moralistic stance (if he has some intellectual honesty); this Nabokovian way of involving the reader in his characters' actions -through seemingly absent, actually well-hidden in full view! authorial comment- also enables him as an author to avoid the moralistic stance he loathes.
Also, all these outrageous double-entendres in Lucette's speech, in addition to being funny, reveal her helpless hysteria, due to her early exposure to Van's and Ada's sensuality.
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 03:29:53 +0300
From: skylark1970@MAIL.RU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Ada's erotic geography
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
'- I got stuck with six Buchstaben in the last
round of a Flavita game. Mind you, I was eight and had not studied anatomy, but
was doing my poor little best to keep up with two Wunderkinder. You
examined and fingered my groove and quickly redistributed the haphazard sequence
which made, say, LIKROT or ROTIKL and Ada flooded us both with her raven silks
as she looked over our heads, and when you had completed the rearrangement, you
and she came simultaneously, si je puis le mettre comme ça (Canady
French), came falling on the black carpet in a paroxysm of incomprehensible
merriment; so finally I quietly composed ROTIK ('little mouth') and was left
with my own cheap initial. I hope I've thoroughly got you mixed up, Van, because
la plus laide fille au monde peut donner beaucoup plus qu'elle n'a, and
now let us say adieu, yours ever.'
'Whilst the machine is to him,' murmured
Van.
'Hamlet,' said the assistant lecturer's brightest
student. (Ada, 2.5)
The anatomical term little Lucette did not know and therefore could not
compose in a Flavita game was klitor (clitoris).
In his poem Evropa (Europe, 1919) included in Rossiya
raspyataya (The Crucified Russia) Max Voloshin affirms that Europe's
"maternal organs" (maternie organy), her uterus and clitoris
(pokhotnik), are in the Archipelago (the Aegean Sea):
Полярным льдам уста её открыты,
У пояса,
среди сапфирных влаг,
Как пчельный рой у чресел Афродиты,
Раскинул острова
Архипелаг.
Сюда ведут страстных желаний тропы,
Здесь матерние органы
Европы,
Здесь, жгучие дрожанья затая, -
В глубоких влуминах укрытая
стихия,
Чувствилище и похотник ея...
For his floramors (palatial brothels in Eric Veen's essay
"Villa Venus: an Organized Dream") David van Veen used marble columns dredged
from classical seas:
He began with rural England and coastal America,
and was engaged in a Robert Adam-like composition (cruelly referred to by local
wags as the Madam-I'm-Adam House), not far from Newport, Rodos Island, in a
somewhat senile style, with marble columns dredged from classical seas and still
encrusted with Etruscan oyster shells - when he died from a stroke while helping
to prop up a propylon. (2.3)
(Rhodos is the Greek
name of Rhodes, one of the largest islands in the Archipelago famous for
its Colossus. Newport is a city in Rhode Island, USA.)
From Ada's letter to
Van: All this you are free to diagnose as a
case of advanced erotomania, but there is more to it, because there exists a
simple cure for all my maux and throes and that is an extract
of scarlet aril, the flesh of yew, just only yew... Take the fastest flying
machine you can rent straight to El Paso, your Ada will be waiting for you
there, waving like mad, and we'll continue, by the New World Express, in a suite
I'll obtain, to the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant's Horn, a Villa in
Verna, my jewel, my agony. (2.1) It seems to me
that "the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant's Horn" is America's
male organ.
Note that Ada read a
three-volume History of Prostitution at the age of ten or eleven,
between Hamlet and Captain Grant's Microgalaxies.
(1.35)
pokhotnik = p + okhotnik (hunter; in a
letter of October 30, 1833, to his wife Pushkin uses the feminine form of
okhotnik, okhotnitsa, in the sense "lover,
enthusiast" and in a very frivolous context; in the same letter Pushkin chides
Natalie for her coquetry and calls Ninon Lenclos staraya kurva, "old
whore"; poets will be disappointed to learn that okhotnik and
pokhotnik do not rhyme)
samogon krovi + on = mnogo vina
skoro (Samogon krovi is the title of
Voloshin's article on death penalty included "The Crucified Russia", see my
previous posts; superstitious Russians often called the devil on, "he"; mnogo vina
skoro - Russ., a lot of vodka soon)
Samogon krovi (the unauthorized spilling of
blood) in the 20th century Russia brings to mind another Archipelago, the
GULAG.
In 1918, when the Nabokovs lived in the Crimea, VN met
Voloshin in Yalta.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Google Search the archive
Contact the Editors
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla
View Nabokv-L Policies
Manage subscription options
Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations
Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/