Subject
[TRIVIA] Spatulate eroticism related to radiant necklaces
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Pnin: "It warmed my heart, the Russian-intelligentski way he had of getting into his overcoat: his inclined head would demonstrate its ideal baldness, and his large, Duchess of Wonderland chin would firmly press against the crossed ends of his green muffler to hold it in place on his chest while, with a jerk of his broad shoulders, he contrived to get into both armholes at once; another heave and the coat was on,"
JM: There are several articles about Nabokov and gesture, or Nabokov and cinesthesia ( S.E.S's upsidedown article is the latest, I think).
I wish this subject were brought up more often in the VN-List for feminine shoulders, particularly the escapulate bones, play an important role in VN's erotic fantasies. I remember Stan-Kelly's indignation with Nabokov's use of "omoplates",in "The Original of Laura," as if the medical-anatomical emphasis spoiled its flight.*
A copy of "King,Queen,Knave" is unavailable to me right now but I remember well a description of Martha's shoulders moving like wings when she clasped a necklace behind her neck. This movement reappers in "Ada." It is Lucette's "thin bare shoulders," which were "so mobile and tensile that one wondered if she could not cross them in front of her like stylized angel wings.."
John Shade, though, was not equally lyrical when he wrote: "...Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade/ Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?"
A manly motion with the standard strong broad shoulders was a prerequisite for Van's mascodagama inversion and fundamental for his graceful maniambulations.
Her frail feminine concavities delight Lucette so that Van "could not help, for sensuality is the best breeding broth of fatal error, caressing her glossy young shoulder so as to fit for an instant, the happiest in her life, its ideal convexity bilboquet-wise within the hollow of his palm." Van's recollections usually brought him back not Lucette, but Ada: "the fragments of the tesselation...and the girl in yellow slacks and black jacket, standing with her hands behind her back, slightly rocking her shoulders, leaning her back now closer now less closely against the tree trunk, and tossing her hair - a definite picture that he knew he had never seen in reality - remained within him more real than any actual memory." Or else: "the same heap of hopeless tenderness, self-immolation, denunciation of demoniac life, in which he would drop in backthought, in the innermost bower of his brain every time he remembered her impossible semi-smile as she adjusted her shoulder blades to the trunk of the final tree " And Van recalled, "as something fantastically ravishing and hopelessly irretrievable, her hurrying up with her candlestick on the night of the Burning Barn". This image was "capitalized in his memory forever - he with his dancing light behind her hurdies and calves and mobile shoulders and streaming hair, and the shadows in huge surges of black geometry overtaking them, in their winding upward course, along the yellow wall." [ ]"Ada's "shoulders were intolerably graceful: I would never permit my wife to wear strapless gowns with such shoulders, but how could she be my wife?"
The connection between diamond rivers, false necklaces and wings seems to be with young Vladimir Nabokov's fascination with his mother's real rich jewels dissolving into lights dimly gliding through the windows of a train ( and now it's Sebastian's mother's travelling bag that comes to my mind).
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* - After a reference to "omoplates" in Ada,a few words in "King Wing's carpet jargon" follow: "He freed one scarlet ear, was retrapped, was tripped and collapsed under Van, who instantly put him 'on his omoplates,' na lopatki, as King Wing used to say in his carpet jargon."
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JM: There are several articles about Nabokov and gesture, or Nabokov and cinesthesia ( S.E.S's upsidedown article is the latest, I think).
I wish this subject were brought up more often in the VN-List for feminine shoulders, particularly the escapulate bones, play an important role in VN's erotic fantasies. I remember Stan-Kelly's indignation with Nabokov's use of "omoplates",in "The Original of Laura," as if the medical-anatomical emphasis spoiled its flight.*
A copy of "King,Queen,Knave" is unavailable to me right now but I remember well a description of Martha's shoulders moving like wings when she clasped a necklace behind her neck. This movement reappers in "Ada." It is Lucette's "thin bare shoulders," which were "so mobile and tensile that one wondered if she could not cross them in front of her like stylized angel wings.."
John Shade, though, was not equally lyrical when he wrote: "...Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade/ Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?"
A manly motion with the standard strong broad shoulders was a prerequisite for Van's mascodagama inversion and fundamental for his graceful maniambulations.
Her frail feminine concavities delight Lucette so that Van "could not help, for sensuality is the best breeding broth of fatal error, caressing her glossy young shoulder so as to fit for an instant, the happiest in her life, its ideal convexity bilboquet-wise within the hollow of his palm." Van's recollections usually brought him back not Lucette, but Ada: "the fragments of the tesselation...and the girl in yellow slacks and black jacket, standing with her hands behind her back, slightly rocking her shoulders, leaning her back now closer now less closely against the tree trunk, and tossing her hair - a definite picture that he knew he had never seen in reality - remained within him more real than any actual memory." Or else: "the same heap of hopeless tenderness, self-immolation, denunciation of demoniac life, in which he would drop in backthought, in the innermost bower of his brain every time he remembered her impossible semi-smile as she adjusted her shoulder blades to the trunk of the final tree " And Van recalled, "as something fantastically ravishing and hopelessly irretrievable, her hurrying up with her candlestick on the night of the Burning Barn". This image was "capitalized in his memory forever - he with his dancing light behind her hurdies and calves and mobile shoulders and streaming hair, and the shadows in huge surges of black geometry overtaking them, in their winding upward course, along the yellow wall." [ ]"Ada's "shoulders were intolerably graceful: I would never permit my wife to wear strapless gowns with such shoulders, but how could she be my wife?"
The connection between diamond rivers, false necklaces and wings seems to be with young Vladimir Nabokov's fascination with his mother's real rich jewels dissolving into lights dimly gliding through the windows of a train ( and now it's Sebastian's mother's travelling bag that comes to my mind).
..................................................................................................................................................................
* - After a reference to "omoplates" in Ada,a few words in "King Wing's carpet jargon" follow: "He freed one scarlet ear, was retrapped, was tripped and collapsed under Van, who instantly put him 'on his omoplates,' na lopatki, as King Wing used to say in his carpet jargon."
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/