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Dostoevski and psychoanalysis
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Re: [NABOKV-L] Dostoevski and psychoanalysisStan Kelly-Bootle [ to Alexey}:"Your discovery of links between LATH and Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko do merit a reward...Your clever anagrammatical games, however, do little to advance Nabokovian understanding ...Indeed, our enjoyment of VN’s own wordplays may well suffer from seeing how easy it is to juggle characters!"
JM: In past postings you'll find Simon Karlinski's comments about Russian puning and Nabokov, related to Edmund Wilson's permanent critical stance towards Nabokov's puns (cf. SK's notes in "Dear Bunny/dear Volodya").
What do you make of that, extracted from "Ultima Thule"?
"To a lady who has lost her right hand: I kiss your ellipsis. To a deceased: Respecterfully yours. But enough of these sheepish vignettes. If you don't remember, then I remember for you: the memory of you can pass, grammatically speaking at least, for your memory, and I am perfectly willing to grant for the sake of an ornate phrase that if, after your death, I and the world still endure, it is only because you recollect the world and me." *
I'm still in pursuit of "Krug" related items. Here is one more ( "Solus Rex") : "We are inclined to attribute to the immediate past (I just had it in my hands, I put it right there, and now it's not there) lineaments relating it to the unexpected present...We, the slaves of linked events, endeavor to close the gap with a spectral ring in the chain. As we look back, we feel certain that the road we see behind us is the very one that has brought us to the tomb or the fountainhead near which we find our selves. Life's erratic leaps and lapses can be endured by the mind only when signs of resilience and quagginess are discoverable in anterior events."
Am I right to understand that, for Nabokov, chance-events provide a particular pattern and a reference-frame to human life by their regular, whimsical emergence?
.....................................................................................
*- I lost my way bt. Solus Rex and Ultima Thule, with their wink to chess-experts and computer programs. In a small island (was Zembla an island, too? Did it also float,. powered by magnets?)... in a small island of text there's an interlingual mention to Hazel (cf. the color of VN's passport-eyes):
"The words of the family arms, "see and rule" (sassed ud halsem), used to be changed by wags, when referring to him, to "armchair and filbert brandy" (sasse ud hazel)."
I suppose there is a formula to transpose "halsem" into "hazel."
Stray sound-associations led me, once again, to "filipino," applied to a love-game using the twinned kernels of almonds or hazel-nuts (wiki:" Vielliebchen (Brauchtum), den Einsatz, worum jemand mit einem anderen beim gemeinsamen Essen einer doppelkernigen Frucht gewettet hat").
And, like in our A.S anagrams, there seems to be a link bt. filisbert and viellibchen, found through Proust's reference to "philipoena" (as it came out in English)
"But at the same time, to these animated dresses the complication of their trimmings, none of which had any practical utility or served any visible purpose, added something detached, pensive, secret, in harmony with the melancholy which Mme Swann still retained, at least in the shadows under her eyes and the drooping arches of her hands... Beneath the profusion of sapphire charms, enamelled four-leaf clovers, silver medals, gold medallions, turquoise amulets, ruby chains and topaz chestnuts there would be on the dress itself some design carried out in colour which pursued across the surface of an inserted panel a preconceived existence of its own, some row of little satin buttons which buttoned nothing and could not be unbuttoned, a strip of braid that sought to please the eye with the minuteness, the discretion of a delicate reminder; and these, as well as the jewels, gave the impression―having otherwise no possible justification―of disclosing a secret intention, being a pledge of affection, keeping a secret, ministering to a superstition, commemorating a recovery from sickness, a granted wish, a love affair or a philopena."
The original Proust quote:
Mais en même temps à ces robes si vives, la complication des ?garnitures? sans utilité pratique, sans raison d'être visible, ajoutait quelque chose de désintéressé, de pensif, de secret, qui s'accordait à la mélancolie que Mme Swann gardait toujours au moins dans la cernure de ses yeux et les phalanges de ses mains. Sous la profusion des porte-bonheur en saphir, des trèfles à quatre feuilles d'émail, des médailles d'argent, des médaillons d'or, des amulettes de turquoise, des cha?nettes de rubis, des chataignes de topaze, il y avait dans la robe elle-même tel dessin colorié poursuivant sur un empiècement rapporté son existence antérieure, telle rangée de petits boutons de satin qui ne boutonnaient rien et ne pouvaient pas se déboutonner, une soutache cherchant à faire plaisir avec la minutie, la discrétion d'un rappel délicat, lesquels, tout autant que les bijoux, avaient l'air ― n'ayant sans cela aucune justification possible ― de déceler une intention, d'être un gage de tendresse, de retenir une confidence, de répondre à une superstition, de garder le souvenir d'une guérison, d'un vu, d'un amour ou d'une philippine.
philopena (the Cassell Concise Dictionary) "a game in which two people share the double kernel of a nut, the first being entitled to a forfeit, under certain conditions, on the next meeting with the other sharer; the kernel so shared; the forfeit." The etymology given was "corr[uption] of G[erman] Vielliebchen, dim[inutive] of viellieb (viel, much, lieb dear)."
OED and discovered both the sense and the etymology were more complicated: [Immediate origin unknown. Cf. French philippine (1869 in the phrase Bonjour, Philippine!...The relationship between these words is unclear. Later forms in -paene, -pena, -poena app. show folk-etymological alteration after PHILO- comb. form and POENA n. or its etymon classical Latin poena.
Quoted in David Lewis Cohn's "The Good Old Days: History of American Morals and Manners as Seen through the Sears Roebuck Catalogs": "Another and highly reprehensible way of extorting a gift is to have what is called a philopena with a gentleman. This very silly joke is when a young lady, in cracking almonds, chances to find two kernels in one shell; she shares them with a beau; and whichever calls out 'philopena' on their next meeting, is entitled to receive a present from the other; and she is to remind him of it till he remembers to comply. . . . There is a great want of delicacy and self-respect in philopenaism, and no lady who has a proper sense of her dignity as a lady will engage in anything of the sort."
And Frank R. Stockton's story "The Philopena" begins by describing a particularly drastic forfeit: There were once a Prince and a Princess who, when quite young, ate a philopena together. They agreed that the one who, at any hour after sunrise the next day, should accept any thing from the other―the giver at the same time saying "Philopena!"―should be the loser, and that the loser should marry the other.Posted by languagehat at March 10, 2007 11:09 AM
........
tw: filbert (hazelnut) is applied to "nuts" (lunatics).
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JM: In past postings you'll find Simon Karlinski's comments about Russian puning and Nabokov, related to Edmund Wilson's permanent critical stance towards Nabokov's puns (cf. SK's notes in "Dear Bunny/dear Volodya").
What do you make of that, extracted from "Ultima Thule"?
"To a lady who has lost her right hand: I kiss your ellipsis. To a deceased: Respecterfully yours. But enough of these sheepish vignettes. If you don't remember, then I remember for you: the memory of you can pass, grammatically speaking at least, for your memory, and I am perfectly willing to grant for the sake of an ornate phrase that if, after your death, I and the world still endure, it is only because you recollect the world and me." *
I'm still in pursuit of "Krug" related items. Here is one more ( "Solus Rex") : "We are inclined to attribute to the immediate past (I just had it in my hands, I put it right there, and now it's not there) lineaments relating it to the unexpected present...We, the slaves of linked events, endeavor to close the gap with a spectral ring in the chain. As we look back, we feel certain that the road we see behind us is the very one that has brought us to the tomb or the fountainhead near which we find our selves. Life's erratic leaps and lapses can be endured by the mind only when signs of resilience and quagginess are discoverable in anterior events."
Am I right to understand that, for Nabokov, chance-events provide a particular pattern and a reference-frame to human life by their regular, whimsical emergence?
.....................................................................................
*- I lost my way bt. Solus Rex and Ultima Thule, with their wink to chess-experts and computer programs. In a small island (was Zembla an island, too? Did it also float,. powered by magnets?)... in a small island of text there's an interlingual mention to Hazel (cf. the color of VN's passport-eyes):
"The words of the family arms, "see and rule" (sassed ud halsem), used to be changed by wags, when referring to him, to "armchair and filbert brandy" (sasse ud hazel)."
I suppose there is a formula to transpose "halsem" into "hazel."
Stray sound-associations led me, once again, to "filipino," applied to a love-game using the twinned kernels of almonds or hazel-nuts (wiki:" Vielliebchen (Brauchtum), den Einsatz, worum jemand mit einem anderen beim gemeinsamen Essen einer doppelkernigen Frucht gewettet hat").
And, like in our A.S anagrams, there seems to be a link bt. filisbert and viellibchen, found through Proust's reference to "philipoena" (as it came out in English)
"But at the same time, to these animated dresses the complication of their trimmings, none of which had any practical utility or served any visible purpose, added something detached, pensive, secret, in harmony with the melancholy which Mme Swann still retained, at least in the shadows under her eyes and the drooping arches of her hands... Beneath the profusion of sapphire charms, enamelled four-leaf clovers, silver medals, gold medallions, turquoise amulets, ruby chains and topaz chestnuts there would be on the dress itself some design carried out in colour which pursued across the surface of an inserted panel a preconceived existence of its own, some row of little satin buttons which buttoned nothing and could not be unbuttoned, a strip of braid that sought to please the eye with the minuteness, the discretion of a delicate reminder; and these, as well as the jewels, gave the impression―having otherwise no possible justification―of disclosing a secret intention, being a pledge of affection, keeping a secret, ministering to a superstition, commemorating a recovery from sickness, a granted wish, a love affair or a philopena."
The original Proust quote:
Mais en même temps à ces robes si vives, la complication des ?garnitures? sans utilité pratique, sans raison d'être visible, ajoutait quelque chose de désintéressé, de pensif, de secret, qui s'accordait à la mélancolie que Mme Swann gardait toujours au moins dans la cernure de ses yeux et les phalanges de ses mains. Sous la profusion des porte-bonheur en saphir, des trèfles à quatre feuilles d'émail, des médailles d'argent, des médaillons d'or, des amulettes de turquoise, des cha?nettes de rubis, des chataignes de topaze, il y avait dans la robe elle-même tel dessin colorié poursuivant sur un empiècement rapporté son existence antérieure, telle rangée de petits boutons de satin qui ne boutonnaient rien et ne pouvaient pas se déboutonner, une soutache cherchant à faire plaisir avec la minutie, la discrétion d'un rappel délicat, lesquels, tout autant que les bijoux, avaient l'air ― n'ayant sans cela aucune justification possible ― de déceler une intention, d'être un gage de tendresse, de retenir une confidence, de répondre à une superstition, de garder le souvenir d'une guérison, d'un vu, d'un amour ou d'une philippine.
philopena (the Cassell Concise Dictionary) "a game in which two people share the double kernel of a nut, the first being entitled to a forfeit, under certain conditions, on the next meeting with the other sharer; the kernel so shared; the forfeit." The etymology given was "corr[uption] of G[erman] Vielliebchen, dim[inutive] of viellieb (viel, much, lieb dear)."
OED and discovered both the sense and the etymology were more complicated: [Immediate origin unknown. Cf. French philippine (1869 in the phrase Bonjour, Philippine!...The relationship between these words is unclear. Later forms in -paene, -pena, -poena app. show folk-etymological alteration after PHILO- comb. form and POENA n. or its etymon classical Latin poena.
Quoted in David Lewis Cohn's "The Good Old Days: History of American Morals and Manners as Seen through the Sears Roebuck Catalogs": "Another and highly reprehensible way of extorting a gift is to have what is called a philopena with a gentleman. This very silly joke is when a young lady, in cracking almonds, chances to find two kernels in one shell; she shares them with a beau; and whichever calls out 'philopena' on their next meeting, is entitled to receive a present from the other; and she is to remind him of it till he remembers to comply. . . . There is a great want of delicacy and self-respect in philopenaism, and no lady who has a proper sense of her dignity as a lady will engage in anything of the sort."
And Frank R. Stockton's story "The Philopena" begins by describing a particularly drastic forfeit: There were once a Prince and a Princess who, when quite young, ate a philopena together. They agreed that the one who, at any hour after sunrise the next day, should accept any thing from the other―the giver at the same time saying "Philopena!"―should be the loser, and that the loser should marry the other.Posted by languagehat at March 10, 2007 11:09 AM
........
tw: filbert (hazelnut) is applied to "nuts" (lunatics).
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/