Subject
Re: Pale Fire 'book of names' is Pnin
From
Date
Body
A.Stadlen: [ on Cf. S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, SE vol. IV, describing the joke in which a man, accused of having damaged the teapot...]
Not a teapot. A kettle (Kessel).
Stan K-B: The narrator V. describes IMAGINATION as the MUSCLE of the MIND. That's a wonderful quote apparently supported by current Cognitive Science studies. Thanks to the N-list moderators for providing the GYMNASIUM where we can "work out" on those mental biceps ...
M.Roth to T. Kaminski: ...there are many threads that connect VN's novels. I'm not sure that is enough to surmise that Kinbote's "remarkable book on surnames" is, in fact, Pnin. [...]a book on surnames would be almost impossible to translate [...] What would we do with a last name like Steinmann? I think Jansy once pointed out something similar in Pale Fire, where the Portuguese translation obliterated the difference between two words in the original English. In any case, as JF recently noted, the whole of the dialogue in C.894 is highly suspect. If you have not read Barabtarlo's exhaustive annotations to Pnin, you might give it a look. He does a great job unpacking many of the name associations there.
J. Friedman to M Roth[ on John and Sybil "sent her, though, to a chateau in France" (line 336). The verb phrase here ("we sent her") seems a bit harsh, no? [...]she seems, at times, to be quite impervious to her child's distress. I would compare her attitude to Ada's toward Lucette.] Maybe just concise? There's no room in the meter for "we paid for her trip to a chateau in France." Or consolation for herself and John--Hazel is happy looking the way she is [...] it can be read as blaming Hazel.[...] I find that point and comparison to /Ada/interesting, though [...] we have only Kinbote's account.[...] Shade seems to feel responsible for Hazel's death (perhaps rightly), and in myths and other sources killing one's children is linked to incest [...] but in /Pale Fire/ that's probably restricted to association rather than "real" events.
S K-B: It's quite tricky judging the harshness of "we sent her" viewed in cold print. I can "hear" different nuances if the phrase cropped up in everyday family banter.[...] The idioms are more friendly than the literal meanings.
JM: I can agree with S K-B that idioms are friendlier than the literal meanings, and I think many of you are too hard on regular fathers, mothers,blind dates and all. There are moments when normal parents feel impatient, discouraged, disappointed, use harsh words, fight against devious incestuous tenderness and aggression...Would VN have attempted to establish a "psychological" portrayal of any bourgeois or anomalous family life?
JF's suggestion makes sense when he emphasized association rather 'real' events", and I add: to word games, metaphors instead of regular "facts".
MR remembered my comments about translating names ( instead of Waxwing we find Ampelis already in the first translated lines of the poem and consequences can be felt in the Index even. There are hundreds of other examples).
Recently A.Bouazza called our attention to D. Barton Johnson's very insightful articles on The Eye as a seminal work in VN's oeuvre, "The Books Reflected in N's The Eye,", M. Roth added Barabtarlo's annotations to Pnin. I would like to return to D.Barton Johnson to add "Worlds in Regression"( in particular, ch.4 Nabokov as a Maze Maker for "The labyrinth of incest in ADA", and on Pale Fire, ch.2 "The index of refraction in Pale Fire"*). Johnson stresses how "anagrams play a vital role in our understanding of the labyrinth of Pale Fire and show once again that such word games are one of the ways in which Nabokov's fictional worlds relate to each other. The failure of the characters to recognize their literal kinship with each other is but a dimension of their failure to find the name of their creator who orchestrates the letter play that makes up their worlds".
While I puzzled over the translation of a German Kessel into kettle ( in Brazil, "chaleira" and, in Russian, "Tchainik" the reference to Oriental tea is present in "tcha","cha",cha....), following A.Stadlen's concise correction, I found a totally different reference, on-line, concerning the word Arctic (Arctus: a bear in Greek,the Arctic lies under Ursa Minor).
Polar stars, arctic regions, Alaska figure prominently in VN's work (Lolita) In Ada it is mainly associated to Ursus, bears, Ursuline nuns, Flaubert and...Lucette.
We must remember that HH observed that " Nymphets do not occur in polar regions." Quilty's Pavor Manor sports a polar bear skin on its slippery floor and HH's "pale, pregnant, beloved, irretrievable Dolly Schiller dying in Gray Star (the capital town of the book)... a settlement in the remotest Northwest
( Dick was offered a job in Alaska) At the very end HH writes: "Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska." Where, actually, HH also sojourned.
I wish I could play any of those anagramatic games in which A.Sklyarenko shows such expertise. As it is, I got stuck right at stard. I can only invite other participants to follow these "polar arctic" links and nymphethood.
...................................................................................................................................................................
*: "Pale Fire's Index proves to be a documen t no less bizarre than the deranged Kinbote's commentaries. Like them, it has almost no relevance to the poem, but only to that portion of the Commentary which adduces the Zemblan theme [...] The major portion of the index is a "Who's Who" of Zemblan history..."
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Not a teapot. A kettle (Kessel).
Stan K-B: The narrator V. describes IMAGINATION as the MUSCLE of the MIND. That's a wonderful quote apparently supported by current Cognitive Science studies. Thanks to the N-list moderators for providing the GYMNASIUM where we can "work out" on those mental biceps ...
M.Roth to T. Kaminski: ...there are many threads that connect VN's novels. I'm not sure that is enough to surmise that Kinbote's "remarkable book on surnames" is, in fact, Pnin. [...]a book on surnames would be almost impossible to translate [...] What would we do with a last name like Steinmann? I think Jansy once pointed out something similar in Pale Fire, where the Portuguese translation obliterated the difference between two words in the original English. In any case, as JF recently noted, the whole of the dialogue in C.894 is highly suspect. If you have not read Barabtarlo's exhaustive annotations to Pnin, you might give it a look. He does a great job unpacking many of the name associations there.
J. Friedman to M Roth[ on John and Sybil "sent her, though, to a chateau in France" (line 336). The verb phrase here ("we sent her") seems a bit harsh, no? [...]she seems, at times, to be quite impervious to her child's distress. I would compare her attitude to Ada's toward Lucette.] Maybe just concise? There's no room in the meter for "we paid for her trip to a chateau in France." Or consolation for herself and John--Hazel is happy looking the way she is [...] it can be read as blaming Hazel.[...] I find that point and comparison to /Ada/interesting, though [...] we have only Kinbote's account.[...] Shade seems to feel responsible for Hazel's death (perhaps rightly), and in myths and other sources killing one's children is linked to incest [...] but in /Pale Fire/ that's probably restricted to association rather than "real" events.
S K-B: It's quite tricky judging the harshness of "we sent her" viewed in cold print. I can "hear" different nuances if the phrase cropped up in everyday family banter.[...] The idioms are more friendly than the literal meanings.
JM: I can agree with S K-B that idioms are friendlier than the literal meanings, and I think many of you are too hard on regular fathers, mothers,blind dates and all. There are moments when normal parents feel impatient, discouraged, disappointed, use harsh words, fight against devious incestuous tenderness and aggression...Would VN have attempted to establish a "psychological" portrayal of any bourgeois or anomalous family life?
JF's suggestion makes sense when he emphasized association rather 'real' events", and I add: to word games, metaphors instead of regular "facts".
MR remembered my comments about translating names ( instead of Waxwing we find Ampelis already in the first translated lines of the poem and consequences can be felt in the Index even. There are hundreds of other examples).
Recently A.Bouazza called our attention to D. Barton Johnson's very insightful articles on The Eye as a seminal work in VN's oeuvre, "The Books Reflected in N's The Eye,", M. Roth added Barabtarlo's annotations to Pnin. I would like to return to D.Barton Johnson to add "Worlds in Regression"( in particular, ch.4 Nabokov as a Maze Maker for "The labyrinth of incest in ADA", and on Pale Fire, ch.2 "The index of refraction in Pale Fire"*). Johnson stresses how "anagrams play a vital role in our understanding of the labyrinth of Pale Fire and show once again that such word games are one of the ways in which Nabokov's fictional worlds relate to each other. The failure of the characters to recognize their literal kinship with each other is but a dimension of their failure to find the name of their creator who orchestrates the letter play that makes up their worlds".
While I puzzled over the translation of a German Kessel into kettle ( in Brazil, "chaleira" and, in Russian, "Tchainik" the reference to Oriental tea is present in "tcha","cha",cha....), following A.Stadlen's concise correction, I found a totally different reference, on-line, concerning the word Arctic (Arctus: a bear in Greek,the Arctic lies under Ursa Minor).
Polar stars, arctic regions, Alaska figure prominently in VN's work (Lolita) In Ada it is mainly associated to Ursus, bears, Ursuline nuns, Flaubert and...Lucette.
We must remember that HH observed that " Nymphets do not occur in polar regions." Quilty's Pavor Manor sports a polar bear skin on its slippery floor and HH's "pale, pregnant, beloved, irretrievable Dolly Schiller dying in Gray Star (the capital town of the book)... a settlement in the remotest Northwest
( Dick was offered a job in Alaska) At the very end HH writes: "Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska." Where, actually, HH also sojourned.
I wish I could play any of those anagramatic games in which A.Sklyarenko shows such expertise. As it is, I got stuck right at stard. I can only invite other participants to follow these "polar arctic" links and nymphethood.
...................................................................................................................................................................
*: "Pale Fire's Index proves to be a documen t no less bizarre than the deranged Kinbote's commentaries. Like them, it has almost no relevance to the poem, but only to that portion of the Commentary which adduces the Zemblan theme [...] The major portion of the index is a "Who's Who" of Zemblan history..."
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/