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Why Osberg?
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I hope nobody will mind if I say a few words as to why of all writers Nabokov made Borges ("Osberg") the author of "La Gitanilla" (as Lolita is known on Antiterra). I think there were three main reasons:
1. Borges was an Argentinean writer ("'Neath sultry sky of Argentina" is the tango that Van dances, as Mascodagama, on his hands; it is the same tango that Bender dances in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf");
2. One of Borges's best-known stories is "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (Cervantes, the real author of Don Quixote, also authored a novella entitled La Gitanilla);
3. Like Homer, Milton and... Panikovsky (a character in "The Golden Calf," a petty thief who simulates blindness), Borges was blind. There are three blind characters (if we don't count Eros) in Ada.
Btw., "Floeberg" (a mass of ice floes resembling an iceberg; Floeberg is the author of "Ursula," an Antiterran novel that seems to correspond to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary") sounds even colder than "Osberg." As to German Berg, it is also present (combined with Russian son, "dream") in "Bergson."
I'll spare you the anagrams this time. But I can not resist the temptation to share with you my latest major find:
In Hugo's "The Man who Laughs" (1869) there is a wandering artist named Ursus (Latin for "bear"). He has a tame wolf named Homo ("man"). In Ada, 'Ursus' is a restaurant in Manhattan (an Antiterran city also known as Man). Other characters of Hugo's novel (set in England at the end of 17th century) include a blind girl named Dea ("goddess") and Gwynplaine, whose face was surgically disfigured when he was a child to make it look like a grinning mask ("...masca eris, et ridebis semper,"* as an old scholar, whom Ursus consults, put it in his book; cf. Mascodagama in Ada). Together with their adopted father, Ursus, and Homo, their "brother," they perform at fairs, until it turns out that Gwynplaine is an aristocrat, Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie. The novel ends tragically: when Gwynplaine returns to her, Dea dies of a heart attack (as Panikovsky does in "The Golden Calf") and Gwynplaine commits a suicide by drowning himself (as Lucette does in Ada). There are even more interesting things (choses).
*"you will be a mask and will laugh forever." Incidentally, Ridebis Semper was Nabokov's one-time pen name. "Zud," a little self-parody written about 1940, was signed with it. A pair of shoes (cf. Paar of Chose, Van's professor and older colleague at the Chose University in England) plays a prominent part in this story. As far as I know, "Zud" (zud is Russian for "itch," but in the story it happens to be the hero's name) was never translated to English.
Interestingly, Zud sounds like the German word for "South," minus the umlaut. "South" is a story by Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939), the story that "Zud" parodies.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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1. Borges was an Argentinean writer ("'Neath sultry sky of Argentina" is the tango that Van dances, as Mascodagama, on his hands; it is the same tango that Bender dances in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf");
2. One of Borges's best-known stories is "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (Cervantes, the real author of Don Quixote, also authored a novella entitled La Gitanilla);
3. Like Homer, Milton and... Panikovsky (a character in "The Golden Calf," a petty thief who simulates blindness), Borges was blind. There are three blind characters (if we don't count Eros) in Ada.
Btw., "Floeberg" (a mass of ice floes resembling an iceberg; Floeberg is the author of "Ursula," an Antiterran novel that seems to correspond to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary") sounds even colder than "Osberg." As to German Berg, it is also present (combined with Russian son, "dream") in "Bergson."
I'll spare you the anagrams this time. But I can not resist the temptation to share with you my latest major find:
In Hugo's "The Man who Laughs" (1869) there is a wandering artist named Ursus (Latin for "bear"). He has a tame wolf named Homo ("man"). In Ada, 'Ursus' is a restaurant in Manhattan (an Antiterran city also known as Man). Other characters of Hugo's novel (set in England at the end of 17th century) include a blind girl named Dea ("goddess") and Gwynplaine, whose face was surgically disfigured when he was a child to make it look like a grinning mask ("...masca eris, et ridebis semper,"* as an old scholar, whom Ursus consults, put it in his book; cf. Mascodagama in Ada). Together with their adopted father, Ursus, and Homo, their "brother," they perform at fairs, until it turns out that Gwynplaine is an aristocrat, Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie. The novel ends tragically: when Gwynplaine returns to her, Dea dies of a heart attack (as Panikovsky does in "The Golden Calf") and Gwynplaine commits a suicide by drowning himself (as Lucette does in Ada). There are even more interesting things (choses).
*"you will be a mask and will laugh forever." Incidentally, Ridebis Semper was Nabokov's one-time pen name. "Zud," a little self-parody written about 1940, was signed with it. A pair of shoes (cf. Paar of Chose, Van's professor and older colleague at the Chose University in England) plays a prominent part in this story. As far as I know, "Zud" (zud is Russian for "itch," but in the story it happens to be the hero's name) was never translated to English.
Interestingly, Zud sounds like the German word for "South," minus the umlaut. "South" is a story by Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939), the story that "Zud" parodies.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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/