Subject
Re: {SIGHTING] The Independent on Lolita's elliptical
delights:the Roman deity?
delights:the Roman deity?
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Date
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Kevin Myers (in the same article): "Consider Humbert's recollection, with all its abominable implications,
of when little Lolita complained she was not feeling well: "I undressed
her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood." Is
there a single line in all of English literature more monstrous and
sickening than those final six words?"
It is the first time I read something about this passage -as if it had been overlooked by even the best critical works on Lolita- for me one of the most striking: The author's deliberate lack of comment after these two lines IS his comment, and it's much more powerful than any authorial indignation.
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:09:47 -0300
From: jansy@AETERN.US
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] {SIGHTING] The Independent on Lolita's elliptical delights:the Roman deity?
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Kevin Myers (in "There are many elliptical delights in the
extraordinary 'Lolita' despite its darkness"
Tuesday August 14 2012, On Line,
The Independent) writes: "Finer and more literary minds
than mine would no doubt draw the parallel to the odyssey through Dublin on
Bloomsday, but we can be in no doubt that the parallel is apt: J'ai toujours
admiré l'oeuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois, remarks Humbert at one stage. The
sublime Dubliner is of course Joyce, and here it is actually Nabokov who is
speaking. Moreover, the word "ormonde" doesn't exist in French; it is a
reference to the Ormond Hotel, where the Sirens' episode of Ulysses is set. (And
what saves sailors from those fell Lorelei, but the Stella Maris, the starlit
sea-shell Venus?)"
Jansy Mello: An interesting expression,
related to Nabokov: "elliptical delights"... It provides a wide berth
for the most extraordinary digressions, some of them closely followed and
firmly grounded in Russian literature by Sklyarenko,
or in Shakespeare, as M. Marcus's.
My contribution here is quite humble, but equally
ellusive. After learning more about the Roman Venus in connection to the
Catholic Virgin Mary (as I indicated in a former posting, as suggestive of
what, in ADA, is "a Roman Deity"**), I was struck by another link, now to the
"sea-shell Venus," since I'd always been intrigued by a peculiar,
unexplained, stress in Pale Fire on "conchology" (shells?).
Would "conchology" represent another convoluted
indication of Venus?.
.............................................................................
* - I seem to remember a VN-L discussion about Ormond and "hors mond"
(otherwordly)
** - "while Broken-Arm Bill
prayed his Roman deity in a frenzy of fear for the Tartar to finish his
job and go.".
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