Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023064, Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:32:29 +0300

Subject
old Perrault
Date
Body
Полковник. Я как-то сразу заметил, что - сумасшедший. По одежде даже видно. И этот быстрый волчий взгляд...
(The colonel noticed at once that Waltz was a madman. His costume and "that quick look of a wolf" betrayed him. The Waltz Invention, Act One)

Salvator Waltz is a protege of general Berg. The Minister of War (the colonel is his advisor) rings Berg up and learns from him of old Perrault's death on the previous night: Слава богу, что умер во сне, бедняга. ("Thank God, the poor man died in his sleep.") Son* (which means both "sleep" and "dream") is a reporter whom Waltz makes his assistant. He (or, rather, she) dutifully runs errands for Waltz but refuses to bring him Annabella (the beautiful young daughter of general Berg) and leaves his (her) master. According to VN (see his Foreword to the English version of Izobretenie Val'sa), Annabella is five years older than Lolita. In Lolita, Annabel Leigh is Humbert Humbert's first love. The thirteen-year-old boy's attempt to make love with Annabel (who was a few months HH's junior) was interrupted by two strangers: I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu. (One, 3)

Charles Perrault (1628-1703**) is the author of Little Red Riding Hood, the fairy tale mentioned in Pale Fire and alluded to in Lolita and her Russian predecessor, Volshebnik (The Enchanter, written in 1939, a year after The Waltz Invention):

...а отсюда уже был естественен переход к признанию за умницей судьбой прекрасного поведения и к первому сладкому содроганию крови: бирюк надевал чепец ("the lone wolf was putting on a night cap")... белозубый в постели, братья с шапрон-ружьями*** (the white-toothed in bed, the brothers with guns)...

Perrault's fairy tale La Barbe Bleue is alluded to in Lolita (Two, 22): Poor Bluebeard. Those brutal brothers.

*Trance in the English version
**St. Petersburg (VN's home city) was founded in 1703
***a play on le petit Chaperon Rouge

Alexey Sklyarenko

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