Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024156, Sun, 5 May 2013 20:09:34 +0200

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Re: Did VN know German? and a library is announced
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Dear Carolyn –and List,



The passage containing Shade’s eleventh birthday begins at line 140 of Canto One:



A thread of subtle pain,

Tugged at by playful death, released again,

But always present, ran through me. One day,

When I’d just turned eleven, as I lay

Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy—

A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy—



And as to “the young girl who is planted on poor innocent young John Shade”, it is in fact a simile for his condition –lines 161 till the end of the same Canto:



But like some little lad forced by a wench

With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,

I was corrupted, terrified, allured,

And though old doctor Colt pronounced me cured

Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains,

The wonder lingers and the shame remains.



A. Bouazza





From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: zondag 5 mei 2013 2:24
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Did VN know German? and a library is announced



Perhaps there are other cats in VN besides Hodges (there's the intriguing cat with celadon eyes that spurns milk in RLSK) Some who understand human language and act as spies all over the house retelling gossip for example, written by ???



Dear Jansy,



Beside's Johnson's real cat Hodge (no s), there is that very odd cat that is left for Kinbote to look after, so odd that I doubt he even exists in the 'real' world of New Wye. He is to be fed so many sardines every other day and to drink nothing but looking glass milk, which Martin Gardner has interesting things to say about - it would seem that Lewis Carroll foresaw modern, nay even post-modern physics. Why not? (Wye knot, indeed).



The way he, Kinbote, strokes the pussy cat makes me think he is 'actually' in Kinbote World caressing Fleur de Fyler, who in 'real' New Wye is a pseudonym for the young girl who is planted on poor innocent young John Shade on his birthday - so frustrating that I can't recall and no one will help in finding which birthday it was. The birthday that gave birth to Charles Kinbote, Shade's younger brother.



In my reading Aunt Maud and the Countess de Fyler are one and the same. The one lives in New Wye and drives a sporty car and has young girlfriends, the other lives rawther stodgily in Zembla. There may be proof that they are the same basic person, in that they die on the same day, that's what I wrote to the List once at any rate. Sylvia and Sybil (note similarity of the names) are of course both married to John Shade.

_____

From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@att.net>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Sat, May 4, 2013 9:20:11 AM
Subject: Did VN know German? and a library is announced

Haphazard trouvailles seem to be piling up to validate my suspicion that Nabokov was a Hoffman reader at some time.







Dear Jansy,



I too have been a cat person in the past - but these days it's all dogs and horses. You suspect N of being a secret admirer of Hoffmann, and I suspect his German was much better than he let on. Why? Keine Ahnung. No, actually I am sure that he read Goethe in the original and Hoffmann, too,. I do believe that the "von Lichberg" Lolita was probably read by VN in Berlin in '23 when it came out. The German is very simple. I only have high school German and I could read it easily.



I love the "burst appendix" in your attic. I too have books coming out of the seams - but, I am proud to announce that Westminster Cottage (where I live now) is being transformed into a Library which will become part of the UC library system after my passing on. After I die - why not say it. By the end of the summer, the transformation will be complete and WC (oh dear) will be ready to admit readers. Some of you may be aware that my alma mater, UCLA, owns a very beautiful and important library in the West Adams district (close to USC, as it happens), a sort of mimiatura version of the Huntington Library, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, which is the repository of the largest and most important collection of Oscar Wildeana in the world. "Westminster Cottage" will be a branch library, so to speak, of the Clark.



The first tenant of my house (he rented) was Ralph Freud - no relation to Jansy's Freud, so far as I know (and it's pronounced frood), one of the founders of the Pasadena Play House and the founder of the theater arts department at UCLA. Most of my book collecting was in the area of modern illustrated books and fine bindings, music, dance and Russian literature of course. But I am now collecting in the area of theater as well. My most prized acquisition is a 1705 printing of Shakespeare plays - the first illustrated Shakespear (that's how it's spelled) ever published. The texts of the plays are considerably shorter than in the more famous First Folios, and I suspect that they are closer to the actual text of the plays as they were performed at that time, and Shakespear's of course.



Forgive my rambling on - but I am really proud of myself in this regard. When the library is ready, I will invite the List members to visit, so I hope you all will forgive my prolixity this morning. And now it's back to KP!



_____

From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sat, May 4, 2013 8:56:59 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Kater Murr



C. Kunin: Murli-kat'! (to purr in Russian, n'est-ce-pas?). Well, I don't know if E T A Hoffmann (one n or two?) knew Russian or not, but his pussy is indeed a learned Tom -- and not unNabokovian, you may agree - perhaps even a bit Pale Fireish: The Life And Opinions Of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kappelmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper is a complex satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E.T.A. Hoffmann. It was first published in 1819-1821 as Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern, in two volumes. A planned third volume was never completed. It was Hoffmann's final novel and is considered his masterpiece. It reflected his concepts of aesthetics, and predated post-modern literary techniques in its unusual structure. Critic Alex Ross writes of the novel, "If the phantasmagoric 'Kater Murr' were published tomorrow as the work of a young Brooklyn hipster, it might be hailed as a tour de force of postmodern fiction."



Jansy Mello: What a find, Carolyn. It seems to anticipate Kinbote's muddling of Zembla and Shade's life in New Wye. I had already posted something about certain similarities and references in the VN-L concerning "Hoffmann's short story 'My Cousin's Corner Window' [ in Berlin, that] is the dominant feature of a "small room with a low ceiling, high above the street" "That is the usual custom of writers and poets," writes Hoffmann. "What does the low ceiling matter? Imagination soars aloft and builds a high and cheerful dome that rises to the radiant blue sky.".and, recently, about the doll Olympia and the Sandman (from Freud's article on the "Uncanny"). Haphazard trouvailles seem to be piling up to validate my suspicion that Nabokov was a Hoffman reader at some time.

Since I used to be a cat-person (now there's Stark in my life, a devilish black shipperke dog) and collected many stories about them, I'll start to read a forgotten collection of ."Feline Fairy Tales" [ The King of the Cats and other... edited by John Richard Stephens, Faber and Faber] following your original push.I wish I could remember the plot of a cat one in Karel Kapek's (or find his book "Nine Fairy Tales and one thrown in for good measure" that's lost in "the burst appendix" of my attic).

Perhaps there are other cats in VN besides Hodges (there's the intriguing cat with celadon eyes that spurns milk in RLSK) Some who understand human language and act as spies all over the house retelling gossip for example, written by ???

It's difficult to forget that Nabokov even read with delight his uncle's collection from <http://www.google.com.br/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=bibliotheque%20de%20suzette&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bibliothequedesuzette.com%2F&ei=bS2FUYnIGYP28wSzoYCYAQ&usg=AFQjCNESvKToFR46AwXh_s0TPQ__Yw0t2g> La Semaine de Suzette and Bibliothèque de

<http://www.bibliothequedesuzette.com/‎> www.bibliothequedesuzette.com/ <http://www.bibliothequedesuzette.com/‎> ‎

<http://translate.google.com.br/translate?hl=pt-PT&sl=en&u=http://www.bibliothequedesuzette.com/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbibliotheque%2Bde%2Bsuzette%26hl%3Dpt-PT%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D605>



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