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Re: bloody
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Alexey wrote: I thought the name of the cocktail was Gory Mary (see Ada, Part One, chapter 2, the Demon - d'Onsky duel), while "bloody" is Ivan (as this drink is called in Transparent Things, VN's coinage?).
Digitalized references in ADA ( I had a "gory trophy" in my memory and a "déjà vu" that inspired my search) gave me:
1. Demon and d'Onsky duel: " and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish - a kind of American 'Gory Mary' in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden...
2. Another duel: Van and the Captain
the fussy Captain added to them what looked like a potato bag or something rotting in a locker, and then after rummaging again in the car trunk and muttering about the 'bloody mess' (quite a literal statement) decided to sacrifice the ancient and filthy macintosh on which a decrepit dear dog had once died on the way to the veterinary.
3. 0'Good Lord!' he exclaimed, on catching sight of the gory trophy, 'somebody must have chopped off a thumb!' Patting his thighs and his chair, he sought and retrieved - from under the footstool - the vestpocket wordbook and went back to his paper, but a second later had to look up 'groote,' which he had been groping for when disturbed.The simplicity of its meaning annoyed him.
4. And somewhere else we also find: "Blanche, who had been told to whisk Dack to her room but, as usual, had not incarcerated him properly. Both children experienced a chill of déjà-vu (a twofold déjà-vu, in fact, when contemplated in artistic retrospect).
You, Alexey, explained to us some time ago that the "gory trophy" was "apparently a tampon, snatched by Dack [the Dachshund at Ardis] before continuing with the quote when Uncle Dan exclaims about somebody's chopped off thumb while he was still looking up the word "groote".
Your links went from Peter Rast, Tsar & Peter the Great, to the poet Blok at that time. Now you remembered TT and "bloody Ivan", too.
I've always been very careful with passages in VN that invite a Freudian interpretation ( confusing a woman's menstrual blood, as did Uncle Dan, with a chopped-off finger would bring "castration complex" to our minds almost automatically, more so after its proximity with "pederast" and "déjá vus"...). Probably the political allusions are a richer thread to pursue and references that mainly Russians or Russian-speaking readers will be able to understand.
Could you explain your ideas on Peter the Great and Tsars a little more?
Jansy
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Digitalized references in ADA ( I had a "gory trophy" in my memory and a "déjà vu" that inspired my search) gave me:
1. Demon and d'Onsky duel: " and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish - a kind of American 'Gory Mary' in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden...
2. Another duel: Van and the Captain
the fussy Captain added to them what looked like a potato bag or something rotting in a locker, and then after rummaging again in the car trunk and muttering about the 'bloody mess' (quite a literal statement) decided to sacrifice the ancient and filthy macintosh on which a decrepit dear dog had once died on the way to the veterinary.
3. 0'Good Lord!' he exclaimed, on catching sight of the gory trophy, 'somebody must have chopped off a thumb!' Patting his thighs and his chair, he sought and retrieved - from under the footstool - the vestpocket wordbook and went back to his paper, but a second later had to look up 'groote,' which he had been groping for when disturbed.The simplicity of its meaning annoyed him.
4. And somewhere else we also find: "Blanche, who had been told to whisk Dack to her room but, as usual, had not incarcerated him properly. Both children experienced a chill of déjà-vu (a twofold déjà-vu, in fact, when contemplated in artistic retrospect).
You, Alexey, explained to us some time ago that the "gory trophy" was "apparently a tampon, snatched by Dack [the Dachshund at Ardis] before continuing with the quote when Uncle Dan exclaims about somebody's chopped off thumb while he was still looking up the word "groote".
Your links went from Peter Rast, Tsar & Peter the Great, to the poet Blok at that time. Now you remembered TT and "bloody Ivan", too.
I've always been very careful with passages in VN that invite a Freudian interpretation ( confusing a woman's menstrual blood, as did Uncle Dan, with a chopped-off finger would bring "castration complex" to our minds almost automatically, more so after its proximity with "pederast" and "déjá vus"...). Probably the political allusions are a richer thread to pursue and references that mainly Russians or Russian-speaking readers will be able to understand.
Could you explain your ideas on Peter the Great and Tsars a little more?
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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