skb: "even curioser curiosities:[...] in Irish bars, a 'Virgin Mary' gets you a neat tomato juice (with optional sauces and celery sticks) sans the vodka."
JM: I once heard that "Bloody Mary" is not related to Mary Tudor & a red drink, but a compression of the words "By Our Lady" ( ie. the Virgin Mary). Now, thanks to you,  I learned that vodca makes all the difference ...
 
AlexeyCf. Ada's words to Dack whom she just took a blood-soaked tampon: "Nekhoroshaya, nekhoroshaya sobaka," crooned Ada... as she gathered into her arms the now lootless but completely unabashed bad dog".
JMI originally thought that the dach's loot was a tampon, like Alexey, but  now I think that it hints at Ada's deflowering during the burning barn scene. I return to this now only because of the sheer coincidence that approached the  word "maiden", as I was told the guillotine is also named in English, and a lost "maidenhead". But the "polecat" wordplay is certainly not a coincidence ( Alexey wrote: Ada calls Cordula "Mme Perwitzky:" "I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that's Cordula Tobacco, alias Mme Perwitsky."[...] Perwitzky is the fur of the rare tiger polecat, Foetorius sarmaticus" ), neither  is the name VN chose for Tobakov's  tobacco companion, Nicot! (a recorded and historical Charles). An interesting information about VN's playfulness.
 
J.Aisenberg: "I don't think Nabokov really had a theoretical scientific brain at all. I've read this Gogol book[...] and never really knew what he meant with that "four dimension" talk other than the stories being sort of groovy and sort of fantastic[...] since the e.g.s Nabokov supplied of Gogolian prose really seemed like tricks of Rhetoric taken to bizzare extremes, analogies growing into whole independent stories and then fading away, repetivie modifications for comic grotesque hyper-effects, etc."
JM: I'm not sufficiently bright or informed to be able to agree or disagree with what you said about VN's "theoretical scientific brain", but I will stick to my permanent impression that his is, indeed, a brilliant and disciplined scientific brain. Stan K-B said: "One must avoid confusing the concepts of dimension and euclideanism!! VN had in mind, I suppose, the emerging Theory of General Relativity with its 4-dimensional locally-flat but globally-curved space-time, since this was, in fact, the first practical and stunning application of B-L geometries to the real world." and I trust his judgement, too,  although I'm still baffled by how he connected Einstein's "4-dimensional" space-time ( geometry applied "to the real world") and VN's verbal-literary "real" worlds ( and I think I shall die in  a permanent state of bafflement...). Besides, I love VN's "tricks of Rhetoric taken to bizarre extremes": why not add these, too? There are no theological or existencial quandaries to fear, are there?
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.