Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0018683, Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:16:44 +0400

Subject
Re: Nabokov and Jules Verne
Date
Body
FA: To tweak a point even further, cornuate would be related to crown. So by cornuating ones husband one could be crowning him.

Indeed: "'Why not Tofana?' wondered the good and sur-royally antlered general [Ivan Durmanov, Dolly's betrayed husband]. On the other hand, rogonosets velichavyi ("the majestical cornuto") is mentioned by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin (One: XII: 12). See also VN's note to this line in the Commentary to his Translation of EO (vol. 2, pp. 65-66, in my reprint of the Bollingen edition). Incidentally, the whole cuckolding business in ADA seems to go back to Pushkin (who perished because he couldn't stand the thought that one day he might become a cocu himself). I the letter of Nov 6 (old style), 1833, from Boldino, he tells his wife that he has just read quite a dissertation on cocuage in Brantôme.

FA: BTW do women ever receive antlers, horns, crowns etc. when husbands cuckold them?

Apparently, they do not. At least, Dolly Oblonsky (the namesake of Aqua's and Marina's mother), Steve Oblonsky's poor betrayed wife, doesn't seem to have, unlike Alexey Alexandrovich Karenin, her husband's brother-in-law, any antlers.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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