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Re: Fw: TT-19 Introductory Notes John Rea comments on
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These few of my typical chatter will apparently bring me up to date.
I assume that the "Introductory Notes" from Akito for chapter 20
have not been posted yet. In the interest of saving space, etc. I
continue to zap items I'm not commenting on, placing my remarks
after Akiko's where appropriate, and inserting mine with page and
line numbers.
John
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72.11 ff This long rambling sentence is startling from Nabokov, and
almost reminds one of Faulkner's syntax!
>
> 73.07-08: around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and
> scrapes suddenly came from above: The sounds from the inscrutable
> sculpture reminds me of the statue that comes bumping to Don Juan for
> dinner. The inscrutable sculpture also seems to be related with the
> mysterious colossus we have seen in HP's dreams (Ch. 16).
We recall that in addition to the scene in Ada, both Moliere in
his play "Le festin de pierre", and Byron in his long poem "Don Juan"
have used this material.
>
> 73.10: *anide*: Brian Boyd explains "anide" in the LoA edition notes as
> "Anidian, formless, lacking differentiation (of an embryo or fetus). I
> found that in Webster 3 as the definition of "anidian," and I think the
> meanings Brian cites matches the text, but I could not find that
> "anide" equals "anidian....
See now boyd's posting on this topic to our TT material.
"
> The other "anide" hit was in a Spanish verb conjugation
> table. "Anidar">"anide" means 1. to nest....
The nesting (words based on Latin "nidus" = "nest") might seem to
associate itself with some of the nice bird dances and matings
recently posted here. I'm sure that Boccacio's tale of the priest
who taught the girl, "how to put the bird in his nest" is too far
afield to be considered.
>
> 73.26-30: she [went back] to her book, which was a French touring guide
> that listed many splendid restaurants, forked and starred, but not very
> many "pleasant, quiet, well-situated hotels" with three or more turrets
> and sometimes a little red songbird on a twig: Her book seems to be Le
> Guide Rouge, Michelin. Does it have turrets and red songbirds too?
Yes, Michelin's Guide Rouge puts cute symbols in its hotel listings.
Besides cute little representations of smaller versus larger lodgings
shown with one or more roof peaks, sections and tower, there are
birds for tranquillity, tiny diving people for pools. I seem to
have lost both my French and Italian Red guides, or could cite more,
perhaps even a "female skier" for 73.01.
73.33 "should it be 'Savoie' or 'Savoy'?
Either depending on whether one is thinking of French or English;
and remember that some of this territory is in France and some
in Italy
74.01 Their reading scene goes farther because it is a sort of
> infinite regression "into" the book, besides, proofreading is one of the
> important motifs.
We remember previous Nabokov characters who "die into the book";
and the regression motif connects to the mirror one (or vice versa)
>
74.11 "new, very white balls" -- startling in its polyvalence,
but nicely this whole bit is reminiscent of the scene in _Lolita_
> 75.04-05: coon-bear grunts during copulation: An entry added to the list
> of animals (or animal metaphors).
The otherwise startling form "coon-bear" reminds me of the German
word for the American animal raccoon, "Waschbaer, and Waschtier."
Have other languages used this nomenclature?
75.19 "the translucidity of the textual flow" more of the
"transparent" theme, of course.
>
> 75.19-20: the huge battered one [dictionary] in the office: Probably
> Webster 2 VN used. It has all the words that puzzle HP here.
>
> 75.17: rimiform: In botany, shaped like a slit (from Latin *rima*,
> "narrow furrow"). From BB's notes to the LoA edition.
>
> 75.17: balanic plum: Balan- or balano-, a combinative form, glans
For both "rimiform" and "balanic" see Boyd's fine article on the
scrabble game in _Ada_
> 75.24-25: or was the entire combination a sly scramble?: As BB notes,
> "Adam von Librikov" is an anagram of Vladmir Nabokov. Ibid.
I'm tempted to see these three items, "rimiform", "balanic" and
"scramble" (this last a playful ! distortion of "scrabble") all
as ludic invocations of that scene in _Ada_
>
75,07-08 "Reign of Cnut" another "stunning" bit of verbal
transposition.
Th'th'that's all, folks.
John
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