Vladimir Nabokov

bachelor of hearts and water father in Pnin

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 14 October, 2020

In VN’s novel Pnin (1957) Pnin asks Professor “Twynn” if he is a Bachelor of Hearts:

 

On the day of his party, as he was finishing a late lunch in Frieze Hall, Wynn, or his double, neither of whom had ever appeared there before, suddenly sat down beside him and said: 'I have long wanted to ask you something--you teach Russian, don't you? Last summer I was reading a magazine article on birds--'

('Vin! This is Vin!' said Pnin to himself, and forthwith perceived a decisive course of action).

'--well, the author of that article--I don't remember his name, I think it was a Russian one -mentioned that in the Skoff region, I hope I pronounce it right, a local cake is baked in the form of a bird. Basically, of course, the symbol is phallic, but I was wondering if you knew of such a custom?'

It was then that the brilliant idea flashed in Pnin's mind.

'Sir, I am at your service,' he said with a note of exultation quivering in his throat--for he now saw his way to pin down definitely the personality of at least the initial Wynn who liked birds. 'Yes, sir. I know all about those zhavoronki, those alouettes, those--we must consult a dictionary for the English name. So I take the opportunity to extend a cordial invitation to you to visit me this evening. Half past eight, post meridiem. A little house-heating soirée, nothing more. Bring also your spouse--or perhaps you are a Bachelor of Hearts?'

(Oh, punster Pnin!)

His interlocutor said he was not married. He would love to come. What was the address?

'It is nine hundred ninety-nine, Todd Rodd, very simple! At the very very end of the rodd, where it unites with Cleef Ahvnue. A leetle breek house and a beeg blahk cleef.' (Chapter Six,  5)

 

In Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9 of Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), the unmarried Mr Best smiles at John Eglinton, of arts a bachelor:

 

"- Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor."

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.

 

In a conversation about Shakespeare in VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) Ember calls James Joyce “another rivermaid’s father:”

 

'We shall also see Hamlet dragging the dead Ratman from under the arras and along the floor and up the winding stairs, to stow him away in an obscure passage, with some weird light effects anon, when the torch-bearing Switzers are sent to find the body. Another thrill will be provided by Hamlet's sea-gowned figure, unhampered by the heavy seas, heedless of the spray, clambering over bales and barrels of Danish butter and creeping into the cabin where Rosenstern and Guildenkranz, those gentle interchangeable twins ";who came to heal and went away to die,"; are snoring in their common bunk. As the sagebrush country and leopard-spotted hills sped past the window of the men's lounge, more and more pictorial possibilities were evolved. We might be shown, he said (he was a hawkfaced shabby man whose academic career had been suddenly brought to a close by an awkwardly timed love affair), R. following young L. through the Quartier Latin, Polonius in his youth acting Caesar at the University Playhouse, the skull in Hamlet's gloved hands developing the features of a live jester (with the censor's permission); perhaps even lusty old King Hamlet smiting with a poleaxe the Polacks skidding and sprawling on the ice. Then he produced a flask from his hip pocket and said: ";take a shot."; He added he had thought she was eighteen at least, judging by her bust, but, in fact, she was hardly fifteen, the little bitch. And then there was Ophelia's death. To the sounds of Liszt's Les Funérailles she would be shown wrestling — or, as another rivermaid's father would have said, "wrustling" — with the willow. A lass, a salix. He recommended here a side shot of the glassy water. To feature a phloating leaph. Then back again to her little white hand, holding a wreath trying to reach, trying to wreathe a phallacious sliver. Now comes the difficulty of dealing in a dramatic way with what had been in prevocal days the pièce de résistance of comic shorts — the getting-unexpectedly-wet stunt. The hawkman in the toilet lounge pointed out (between cigar and cuspidor) that the difficulty might be neatly countered by showing only her shadow, her falling shadow, falling and glancing across the edge of the turfy bank amid a shower of shadowy flowers. See? Then: a garland afloat. That puritanical leather (on which they sat) was the very last remnant of a phylogenetic link between the modem highly differentiated Pullman idea and a bench in the primitive stage coach: from oats to oil. Then — and. only then — we see her, he said, on her back in the brook (which table. forks further on to form eventually the Rhine, the Dnepr and the Cottonwood Canyon or Nova Avon) in a dim ectoplastic cloud of soaked, bulging bombast-quilted garments and dreamily droning hey non nonny nonny or any other old laud. This is transformed into a tinkling of bells, and now we are shown a liberal shepherd on marshy ground where Orchis mascula grows: period rags, sun-margined beard, five sheep and one cute lamb. An important point this lamb, despite the brevity — one heartthrob — of the bucolic theme. Song moves to Queen's shepherd, lamb moves to brook.' (Chapter 7)

 

According to Liza Bogolepov (Pnin’s former wife), Eric Wind (Victor’s father) calls himself “the land father” and Pnin “the water father:”

 

She lay back, black-skirted, white-bloused, brown-haired, with one pink hand over her eyes.

'How is everything with you?' asked Pnin (have her say what she wants of me, quick!) as he sank into the white rocker near the radiator.

'Our work is very interesting,' she said, still shielding her eyes, 'but I must tell you I don't love Eric any more. Our relations have disintegrated. Incidentally, Eric dislikes his child. He says he is the land father and you, Timofey, are the water father.'

Pnin started to laugh: he rolled with laughter, the rather juvenile rocker fairly cracking under him. His eyes were like stars and quite wet. (Chapter Two, 6)

 

To comfort Pnin Joan Clements (Pnin's landlady) shows him a cartoon with a mermaid:

 

She sat down next to him and opened one of the magazines she had bought.

'We are going to look at some pictures, Timofey.'

'I do not want, John. You know I do not understand what is advertisement and what is not advertisement.'

'You just relax, Timofey, and I'll do the explaining. Oh, look--I like this one. Oh, this is very clever. We have here a combination of two ideas--the Desert Island and the Girl in the Puff. Now, look, Timofey--please'--he reluctantly put on his reading glasses--'this is a desert island with a lone palm, and this is a bit of broken raft, and this is a shipwrecked mariner, and this is the ship's cat he saved, and this here, on that rock--'

'Impossible,' said Pnin. 'So small island, moreover with palm, cannot exist in such big sea.'

'Well, it exists here.'

'Impossible isolation,' said Pnin.

'Yes, but--Really, you are not playing fair, Timofey. You know perfectly well you agree with Lore that the world of the mind is based on a compromise with logic.'

'I have reservations,' said Pnin. 'First of all, logic herself--'

'All right, I'm afraid we are wandering away from our little joke. Now, you look at the picture. So this is the mariner, and this is the pussy, and this is a rather wistful mermaid hanging around, and now look at the puffs right above the sailor and the pussy.'

'Atomic bomb explosion,' said Pnin sadly.

'No, not at all. It is something much funnier. You see, these round puffs are supposed to be the projections of their thoughts. And now at last we are getting to the amusing part. The sailor imagines the mermaid as having a pair of legs, and the cat imagines her as all fish.'

'Lermontov,' said Pnin, lifting two fingers, 'has expressed everything about mermaids in only two poems. I cannot understand American humour even, when I am happy, and I must say--' He removed his glasses with trembling hands, elbowed the magazine aside, and, resting his head on his arm, broke into muffled sobs. (Chapter Two, 7)