Subject
Sopwith Camels and Venus (fwd)
Date
Body
From: didier.machu@univ-pau.fr
'I deplore nobody tried or managed to answer my King, Queen, Knave queries!
Presently I am busy on two articles (on KQK and Lolita) and not considering
any work on a bigger scale in the near future.
With respect to Humbert's hermaphrodite may I mention that, small or not,
Monkey Humbert's hand is supposed to be hairy (as is Hyde's), especially
when it grasps a penele key ("it was part of my hot hairy fist," ch. 28)?
In spite of this I would incline to identify that small hairy creature as a
caterpillar of sorts. That intruder may have found a way into HH's car
during the night. This is only my opinion and I suppose it is not worth
publicizing at large.
As for the mythological reference Steven Barnat suspects behind the
"disguised man": Achilles does disguise as a woman in order to mix with
women but so do other mythological figures (Thor, I think) and literary
characters..
With reference to a later query, may I mention that "à la fourchette" is
used by VN elsewhere and quoted by Alan Levy (The Velvet Butterfly, p. 8).
VN remembers a supper à la fourchette in Prague (1923) with chaud-froid as
one of the dishes'
Right now I am perplexed by two darkbloomesque entries in Carl Proffer's
Index to his Keys to Lolita. They read: 'Sopwith: See Lindy' and 'Lindy:See
Sopwith.' Now I know that Sopwith Camels, manufactured by Sir Thomas
Sopwith (an erstwhile America's Cup challenger), were credited with winning
the Battle of Britain and that 'Lindy' is the name of Dreyer's boat in
King, Queen, Knave (fleetingly and mistakenly referring to his native
Linden) as well as the name given in the late twenties to a form of
jitterbug to honour Charles Lindbergh ('Lucky Lindy'). Dreyer alludes to
Nungesser and Coli's unsuccessful attempt to cross the Atlantic, taking off
from Europe. But how do these elements connect with Lolita, if at all? Is
Carl Proffer 'making an April fool of someone' as the epigraph from Despair
seems to suggest?
As to the query on the surrealistic Venus I suppose the photographer is
Philippe Halsman whose pictures were published in Life Magazine. He came to
know Salvador Dali in 1947 and worked with him for some thirty years,
giving a photographic rendition of his dreams and taking hundreds of
pictures of him that illustrate his conception of 'psychological
portraiture'. I have several in mind (they all imply staging, optical
effects and a lot of lab work) but I have no copy of any with the Venus di
Milo on the seashore (probably at Port-Lligat, Catalonia) though of course
the Venus is found with or without drawers in many a painting by Dali.
Best.
'I deplore nobody tried or managed to answer my King, Queen, Knave queries!
Presently I am busy on two articles (on KQK and Lolita) and not considering
any work on a bigger scale in the near future.
With respect to Humbert's hermaphrodite may I mention that, small or not,
Monkey Humbert's hand is supposed to be hairy (as is Hyde's), especially
when it grasps a penele key ("it was part of my hot hairy fist," ch. 28)?
In spite of this I would incline to identify that small hairy creature as a
caterpillar of sorts. That intruder may have found a way into HH's car
during the night. This is only my opinion and I suppose it is not worth
publicizing at large.
As for the mythological reference Steven Barnat suspects behind the
"disguised man": Achilles does disguise as a woman in order to mix with
women but so do other mythological figures (Thor, I think) and literary
characters..
With reference to a later query, may I mention that "à la fourchette" is
used by VN elsewhere and quoted by Alan Levy (The Velvet Butterfly, p. 8).
VN remembers a supper à la fourchette in Prague (1923) with chaud-froid as
one of the dishes'
Right now I am perplexed by two darkbloomesque entries in Carl Proffer's
Index to his Keys to Lolita. They read: 'Sopwith: See Lindy' and 'Lindy:See
Sopwith.' Now I know that Sopwith Camels, manufactured by Sir Thomas
Sopwith (an erstwhile America's Cup challenger), were credited with winning
the Battle of Britain and that 'Lindy' is the name of Dreyer's boat in
King, Queen, Knave (fleetingly and mistakenly referring to his native
Linden) as well as the name given in the late twenties to a form of
jitterbug to honour Charles Lindbergh ('Lucky Lindy'). Dreyer alludes to
Nungesser and Coli's unsuccessful attempt to cross the Atlantic, taking off
from Europe. But how do these elements connect with Lolita, if at all? Is
Carl Proffer 'making an April fool of someone' as the epigraph from Despair
seems to suggest?
As to the query on the surrealistic Venus I suppose the photographer is
Philippe Halsman whose pictures were published in Life Magazine. He came to
know Salvador Dali in 1947 and worked with him for some thirty years,
giving a photographic rendition of his dreams and taking hundreds of
pictures of him that illustrate his conception of 'psychological
portraiture'. I have several in mind (they all imply staging, optical
effects and a lot of lab work) but I have no copy of any with the Venus di
Milo on the seashore (probably at Port-Lligat, Catalonia) though of course
the Venus is found with or without drawers in many a painting by Dali.
Best.