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Re: FWD: Cunning Stunts, "Oh, Calcutta" and other stuff (fwd)
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------------------ "Shuffling from the anal to the genital zones" is
Headmistress Pratt speaking (more or less, I don't have the text w. me),
but the same thing is occuring here. Nabokov takes a title that refers to
backsides and replaces it with one that refers to female genitalia.
Eric
> ===== Original Message From Vladimir Nabokov Forum
<NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> =====
> ------------------ Joking apart, why is there "a shuffling from the anal
> to the genital" in avant-gGarde VN with "cunning stunts" and "cul"
> (ass?) . The erotization of women´s shapely bottoms is not necessarily
> "anal", nor would the enticement by their full breasts be something
> "oral".
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:44 PM
> Subject: Cunning Stunts, "Oh, Calcutta" and other stuff (fwd)
>
>
>> ------------------
>> > ===== Original Message From naiman <naiman@socrates.Berkeley.EDU> =====
>> The Oh! Calcutta! gloss is wonderful -- with its explanation of
> "Edenic" --
>> but we should not neglect Nabokov's transformation of the play's title --
> a
>> shuttling from the anal to the genital. (Is this what is meant by AVANT
>> garde?) The play's title announces a theme that will be picked up again
> in
>> the next chapter, with the explicit pictures of Armande, her impuberal
>> softness and its middle line, and the shot of her spreading wide "the
> lovely
>> legs of a giantess." Later we learn about her "crack lovers" who have
>> enjoyed full conjunction in the course of three trips.
>> The promiscuity (R's preoccupation?) of the novel's leading ladies
>> requires some kind of interpretive treatment. There is a nod to Lolita
>> in the scene from ch. 17 describing Hugh's and Armande's unusual ritual
>> of copulation; note that here it is as if Lolita is forcing Humbert to
> pretend
>> that nothing is going on (he has to hide the preparations, pretend this
>> is just sofa-talk). The ref. to their being on stage is a nod back to
>> the way Humbert sets the scene in that chapter. Julia, too, is sexually
> oriented --
>> the adjective in the not very hidden unscrambled title of the play -
>> stunning -- may be echoed when Julia discusses how she wishes to dazzle
>> some people in Moscow. What else is on that list of "darling words"
>> supplied by Armande?
>> How many other obscenities are in similar near view? John Rea has
>> mentioned Mr. Pines. The following lines seem particularly suggestive:
>> "He lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
>> "Yes at Diablonnet, near Versex."
>> "Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees':
>> yabloni." The presence of VerSEX may trigger a different Russian word
>> that sounds like yabloni, common in many vulgar expressions. Perhaps an
>> additional step (downwards) are the apple trees (with their Edenic
>> associations and results). Here, I am aware I may be moving out on a
>> limb, but Armande Chamar's very name has genital associations
>> (Russian/German)
> if
>> we see it as two mirrored equivalents framed by two "ar"s.
>> Nabokov has used Scham before -- openly in Bend Sinister and, I would
> argue,
>> in Pnin. I cannot recall other instances of similar play with a "mand"
>> syllable. Armande's being of both Belgian and Russian origin (with Hugh
>> guessing two Germanic possibilities) might be relevant. Not as clear a
> case
>> as that of the Russified Frenchman Konstantin Chateau, but the theme is
>> there.
>>
>> Is this better than the jock talk of the fashionable writers R.
>> criticizes? Is our task of readers akin to that of the humble
> proofreaders
>> who bring obscenities to the surface? Yet this may be a necessary part
>> of reaching the moment "where the orgasm of art courses through the whole
>> spine with incomparably more foce than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical
>> panic." (p.102
>>
>> Yet one more comment on fit. The final page of the book returns us to
>> the image of a box "grown completely transparent and hollow." We should
>> recall the box with "Fit" when we read the following line: "This is, I
>> believe, IT (italicized); not the crude anguish of physical death but the
>> incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass fro
>> mone state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it, son". Is the
>> final maneuver akin to a proofreader's, replacing fit with it?
>> And -- to return to the crudeness with which we began -- a word which
>> appears with strange frequency in TT is stuff (stuffiness 19; Armande
>> "demanded hard realistic stuff reflecting our age" (books about Violence
> and
>> Oriental Wisdom"; the muzzled stuff 31; same stuff 32; Neo buddhism and
> all
>> that stuff 60; really wonderful stuff 76 (ostensibly about R's work but
>> perhaps about the debauching of Julia, several of these uses are sexually
>> suggestive); I can't recall VN using this word so
>> often elsewhere; indeed, it seems like the mark of laziness, and perhaps
> it
>> is a marker of R's laziness in writing? This is a highly vague and
>> unnecessary word -- its repeated use by VN may be a way of distinguishing
>> his narrator from the other American writer residing in Switzerland.
>> Eric
>>
>> PS While we are on ch. 11, note the way that the mock-arson subverting
>> or supporting Cunning Stunts hints at the real arson at the book's end,
>> when Hugh is also expecting a sexual encounter. Of course, nearly every
>> chapter looks forward to that one, but the link here seems especially
>> direct.
>>
>>
>> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>>
>>
>>
>> D. Barton Johnson
>> NABOKV-L
>>
>>
>
>
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>
>
>
> D. Barton Johnson
> NABOKV-L
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Headmistress Pratt speaking (more or less, I don't have the text w. me),
but the same thing is occuring here. Nabokov takes a title that refers to
backsides and replaces it with one that refers to female genitalia.
Eric
> ===== Original Message From Vladimir Nabokov Forum
<NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> =====
> ------------------ Joking apart, why is there "a shuffling from the anal
> to the genital" in avant-gGarde VN with "cunning stunts" and "cul"
> (ass?) . The erotization of women´s shapely bottoms is not necessarily
> "anal", nor would the enticement by their full breasts be something
> "oral".
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:44 PM
> Subject: Cunning Stunts, "Oh, Calcutta" and other stuff (fwd)
>
>
>> ------------------
>> > ===== Original Message From naiman <naiman@socrates.Berkeley.EDU> =====
>> The Oh! Calcutta! gloss is wonderful -- with its explanation of
> "Edenic" --
>> but we should not neglect Nabokov's transformation of the play's title --
> a
>> shuttling from the anal to the genital. (Is this what is meant by AVANT
>> garde?) The play's title announces a theme that will be picked up again
> in
>> the next chapter, with the explicit pictures of Armande, her impuberal
>> softness and its middle line, and the shot of her spreading wide "the
> lovely
>> legs of a giantess." Later we learn about her "crack lovers" who have
>> enjoyed full conjunction in the course of three trips.
>> The promiscuity (R's preoccupation?) of the novel's leading ladies
>> requires some kind of interpretive treatment. There is a nod to Lolita
>> in the scene from ch. 17 describing Hugh's and Armande's unusual ritual
>> of copulation; note that here it is as if Lolita is forcing Humbert to
> pretend
>> that nothing is going on (he has to hide the preparations, pretend this
>> is just sofa-talk). The ref. to their being on stage is a nod back to
>> the way Humbert sets the scene in that chapter. Julia, too, is sexually
> oriented --
>> the adjective in the not very hidden unscrambled title of the play -
>> stunning -- may be echoed when Julia discusses how she wishes to dazzle
>> some people in Moscow. What else is on that list of "darling words"
>> supplied by Armande?
>> How many other obscenities are in similar near view? John Rea has
>> mentioned Mr. Pines. The following lines seem particularly suggestive:
>> "He lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
>> "Yes at Diablonnet, near Versex."
>> "Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees':
>> yabloni." The presence of VerSEX may trigger a different Russian word
>> that sounds like yabloni, common in many vulgar expressions. Perhaps an
>> additional step (downwards) are the apple trees (with their Edenic
>> associations and results). Here, I am aware I may be moving out on a
>> limb, but Armande Chamar's very name has genital associations
>> (Russian/German)
> if
>> we see it as two mirrored equivalents framed by two "ar"s.
>> Nabokov has used Scham before -- openly in Bend Sinister and, I would
> argue,
>> in Pnin. I cannot recall other instances of similar play with a "mand"
>> syllable. Armande's being of both Belgian and Russian origin (with Hugh
>> guessing two Germanic possibilities) might be relevant. Not as clear a
> case
>> as that of the Russified Frenchman Konstantin Chateau, but the theme is
>> there.
>>
>> Is this better than the jock talk of the fashionable writers R.
>> criticizes? Is our task of readers akin to that of the humble
> proofreaders
>> who bring obscenities to the surface? Yet this may be a necessary part
>> of reaching the moment "where the orgasm of art courses through the whole
>> spine with incomparably more foce than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical
>> panic." (p.102
>>
>> Yet one more comment on fit. The final page of the book returns us to
>> the image of a box "grown completely transparent and hollow." We should
>> recall the box with "Fit" when we read the following line: "This is, I
>> believe, IT (italicized); not the crude anguish of physical death but the
>> incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass fro
>> mone state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it, son". Is the
>> final maneuver akin to a proofreader's, replacing fit with it?
>> And -- to return to the crudeness with which we began -- a word which
>> appears with strange frequency in TT is stuff (stuffiness 19; Armande
>> "demanded hard realistic stuff reflecting our age" (books about Violence
> and
>> Oriental Wisdom"; the muzzled stuff 31; same stuff 32; Neo buddhism and
> all
>> that stuff 60; really wonderful stuff 76 (ostensibly about R's work but
>> perhaps about the debauching of Julia, several of these uses are sexually
>> suggestive); I can't recall VN using this word so
>> often elsewhere; indeed, it seems like the mark of laziness, and perhaps
> it
>> is a marker of R's laziness in writing? This is a highly vague and
>> unnecessary word -- its repeated use by VN may be a way of distinguishing
>> his narrator from the other American writer residing in Switzerland.
>> Eric
>>
>> PS While we are on ch. 11, note the way that the mock-arson subverting
>> or supporting Cunning Stunts hints at the real arson at the book's end,
>> when Hugh is also expecting a sexual encounter. Of course, nearly every
>> chapter looks forward to that one, but the link here seems especially
>> direct.
>>
>>
>> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>>
>>
>>
>> D. Barton Johnson
>> NABOKV-L
>>
>>
>
>
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>
>
>
> D. Barton Johnson
> NABOKV-L
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L