Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017304, Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:05:57 -0200

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[NABOKOV-L] THOUGHTS: Aunt Maud
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Jerry Friedman: The first reason that comes to my mind for having Shade's father die is to have a literal referent for the waxwing slain (and another place for Kinbote to be belated).

JM: VN scholarship often connects the waxwing slain to a not so distant event: VN's father assassination in Berlin.
There is a (possible) premonitory vision of its "ashen fluff", in relation to a gun and a humming-bird, in Lolita: "We must remember that a pistol is the Freudian symbol of the Ur-father's central forelimb [...] Farlow, with whom I had roamed those remote woods, was an admirable marksman, and with his .38 actually managed to hit a hummingbird, though I must say not much of it could be retrieved for proof - only a little iridescent fluff."

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