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Re: Ardis tap water
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Thanks, Alexey, for the fascinating word-plays/links. Also for quoting some
fine-flowing Nabokovian discourses, with hallmark rarities (Webster III?)
tickling my Brit ears:
utile = archaic: advantageous.
predormitarily = rare adverb: before sleeping.
lammer = I need help here! So many possible allusions? German Lamb =
Lamm, plural La:mmer? Casino chips? Currently computer slang for someone
insufficiently versed in geek-speak?
Usque ad Russkum = compare Irish Gaelic uisge beatha "whisky," literally,
"water of life," from Old Irish uisce "water" + bethu "of life." Echoing the
Latin aqua vitae and French eau de vie.
A usage worthy of comment: the driver says of the road “It abuts at the
forest.” Pedants would normally say (transitively!) “It abuts the forest,”
since the “at” is already embedded in the prefix “a-” (via Latin “ad”) of
“a-but.”
Since “it abuts” is uncommonly posh (compared with “it borders”), one is
left wondering why the driver’s grammar is rather peccably colloquial?
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA (Cantab)
On 01/09/2012 18:20, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark1970@MAIL.RU> wrote:
> The rosy remoteness of Terra was soon veiled for her [Aqua] by direful mists.
> Her disintegration went down a shaft of phases, every one more racking* than
> the last; for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those
> it has invented, established and used in millions of years, in millions of
> lands, on millions of howling creatures.
> She developed a morbid sensitivity to the language of tap water - which echoes
> sometimes (much as the bloodstream does predormitarily) a fragment of human
> speech lingering in one's ears while one washes one's hands after cocktails
> with strangers. Upon first noticing this immediate, sustained, and in her case
> rather eager and mocking but really quite harmless replay of this or that
> recent discourse, she felt tickled at the thought that she, poor Aqua, had
> accidentally hit upon such a simple method of recording and transmitting
> speech, while technologists (the so-called Eggheads) all over the world were
> trying to make publicly utile and commercially rewarding the extremely
> elaborate and still very expensive, hydrodynamic telephones and other
> miserable gadgets that were to replace those that had gone k chertyam
> sobach'im (Russian 'to the devil') with the banning of an unmentionable
> 'lammer.' (Ada, 1.3)
>
> Demon: 'Bonsoir, Bouteillan. You look as ruddy as your native vine - but we
> are not getting any younger, as the amerlocks say...'
> ‘Van…,’ began Demon, but stopped — as he had begun and stopped a number of
> times before in the course of the last years. Some day it would have to be
> said, but this was not the right moment. He inserted his monocle and examined
> the bottles: ‘By the way, son, do you crave any of these aperitifs? My father
> allowed me Lilletovka and that Illinois Brat — awful bilge, antranou svadi, as
> Marina would say. I suspect your uncle has a cache behind the solanders in his
> study and keeps there a finer whisky than this usque ad Russkum. Well, let us
> have the cognac, as planned, unless you are a filius aquae?’
> (No pun intended, but one gets carried away and goofs.)
> ‘Oh, I prefer claret. I’ll concentrate (nalyagu) on the Latour later on. No,
> I’m certainly no T-totaler, and besides the Ardis tap water is not
> recommended!’ (1.38)
>
> [On the morning before his duel with Captain Tapper, a member of the Do-Re-La
> country club] Van was roused by the night porter who put a cup of coffee with
> a local 'eggbun' on his bedside table, and expertly palmed the expected
> chervonetz. He resembled somewhat Bouteillan as the latter had been ten years
> ago and as he had appeared in a dream, which Van now retrostructed as far as
> it would go: in it Demon's former valet explained to Van that the 'dor' in the
> name of an adored river [Ladore] equaled the corruption of hydro in
> 'dorophone.' Van often had word dreams. (1.42)
>
> Dor is also present in Dorofey and Dorofey Road in Kalugano: 'Where are we
> now, Johnny dear?' asked Van as they swung out of the lake's orbit and sped
> along a suburban avenue with clapboard cottages among laundry-lined pines.
> 'Dorofey Road,' cried the driver above the din of the motor. 'It abuts at the
> forest.' (Ibid.)
>
> He [Van] begged her [Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse] to
> massage his legs but she tested him with one glance of her grave, dark eyes -
> and delegated the task to Dorofey, a beefy-handed male nurse, strong enough to
> lift him bodily out of bed, with the sick child clasping the massive nape.
> (Ibid.)
>
> Tapper, tap and tapyor (ballroom pianist; silent film pianist) are related
> words. The author of A Ballroom Pianist and Woman from the Point of View of a
> Drunkard (the story signed Brat** moego brata, "my brother's brother,"*** in
> which girls under sixteen are compared to distilled water), in his story On
> Women (1886) Chekhov mentions the court counsellor Anafemski and the
> department watchman Dorofey:
>
> Логика женщины вошла в поговорку. Когда какой-нибудь надворный советник
> Анафемский или департаментский сторож Дорофей заводят речь о Бисмарке или о
> пользе наук, то любо послушать их: приятно и умилительно; когда же чья-нибудь
> супруга, за неимением других тем, начинает говорить о детях или пьянстве мужа,
> то какой супруг воздержится, чтобы не воскликнуть: «Затарантила таранта! Ну,
> да и логика же, господи, прости ты меня грешного!»
>
> On the other hand, tap water, Tapper and tapyor remind one of Mrs Tapirov,
> whose daughter Van recalls on the day preceding his duel with Tapper: He
> stared for a moment at the harps and the guitars and the flowers in silver
> vases on consoles receding in the dusk of looking-glasses, and recalled the
> schoolgirl whom he had longed for so keenly half a dozen years ago - Rose?
> Roza? Was that her name? Would he have been happier with her than with his
> pale fatal sister? (1.42)
>
> ...Dorofey, like Onegin's coachman, said priehali ('we have arrived') and
> gently propelled Van, past two screened beds, toward a third one near the
> window. (Ibid.)
>
> The name of Onegin's coachman (in Pushkin's drafts) is Ivan: Приехали! сказал
> Иван (One: LII: 9, variant). The only Dorofey mentioned by Pushkin is
> Yezerski's ancestor (who gave birth to 12 sons) in The Pedigree of my Hero
> (1836):
>
> От них два сына рождены:
> Якуб и Дорофей. В засаде
> Убит Якуб, а Дорофей
> Родил двенадцать сыновей.
>
> Pushkin's poem begins:
>
> Начнём ab ovo
> (Let's begin ab ovo).
>
> Ovum being Latin for "egg," one is reminded of the so-called Eggheads (1.3)
> and the local 'eggbun' the night porter brings Van with a cup of coffee
> (1.42). And yezero being obsolete form of ozero (lake), the name Yezerski
> brings to mind the Lakeview Hospital in Kalugano where Van recovers from the
> wound he received in his duel with Tapper.
>
> Dorofey rhymes with trofey (trophy), which can be easily turned into Trofim.
> Trofim Fartukov is the coachman in Ardis the Second. On the other hand, in a
> letter of June 12, 1891, to Lika Mizinova (nicknamed Jamais), Chekhov mentions
> the carter Trophim who would enlarge Lika's vocabulary with foul words:
>
> Сейчас получил от Вас письмо. Оно сверху донизу полно такими милыми
> выражениями, как "чёрт вас задави", "чёрт подери", "анафема", "подзатыльник",
> "сволочь", "обожралась" и т. п. Нечего сказать, прекрасное влияние имеют на
> Вас такие ломовые извозчики, как Trophim.
>
> Instead of signature, Chekhov drew a heart pierced with an arrow.
>
> *cf. Philip Rack, the composer of genius (and one of Ada's lovers), whom Van
> looks for in Kalugano and whom he eventually finds on a deathbed in the same
> Lakeview Hospital
> **cf. the Illinois Brat mentioned by Demon
> ***Aqua's last note is signed: My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is
> out of hell')
>
> Alexey Sklyarenko (who drinks from cap and uses cup as a head-gearlike, as
> many Russians do)
>
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fine-flowing Nabokovian discourses, with hallmark rarities (Webster III?)
tickling my Brit ears:
utile = archaic: advantageous.
predormitarily = rare adverb: before sleeping.
lammer = I need help here! So many possible allusions? German Lamb =
Lamm, plural La:mmer? Casino chips? Currently computer slang for someone
insufficiently versed in geek-speak?
Usque ad Russkum = compare Irish Gaelic uisge beatha "whisky," literally,
"water of life," from Old Irish uisce "water" + bethu "of life." Echoing the
Latin aqua vitae and French eau de vie.
A usage worthy of comment: the driver says of the road “It abuts at the
forest.” Pedants would normally say (transitively!) “It abuts the forest,”
since the “at” is already embedded in the prefix “a-” (via Latin “ad”) of
“a-but.”
Since “it abuts” is uncommonly posh (compared with “it borders”), one is
left wondering why the driver’s grammar is rather peccably colloquial?
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA (Cantab)
On 01/09/2012 18:20, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark1970@MAIL.RU> wrote:
> The rosy remoteness of Terra was soon veiled for her [Aqua] by direful mists.
> Her disintegration went down a shaft of phases, every one more racking* than
> the last; for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those
> it has invented, established and used in millions of years, in millions of
> lands, on millions of howling creatures.
> She developed a morbid sensitivity to the language of tap water - which echoes
> sometimes (much as the bloodstream does predormitarily) a fragment of human
> speech lingering in one's ears while one washes one's hands after cocktails
> with strangers. Upon first noticing this immediate, sustained, and in her case
> rather eager and mocking but really quite harmless replay of this or that
> recent discourse, she felt tickled at the thought that she, poor Aqua, had
> accidentally hit upon such a simple method of recording and transmitting
> speech, while technologists (the so-called Eggheads) all over the world were
> trying to make publicly utile and commercially rewarding the extremely
> elaborate and still very expensive, hydrodynamic telephones and other
> miserable gadgets that were to replace those that had gone k chertyam
> sobach'im (Russian 'to the devil') with the banning of an unmentionable
> 'lammer.' (Ada, 1.3)
>
> Demon: 'Bonsoir, Bouteillan. You look as ruddy as your native vine - but we
> are not getting any younger, as the amerlocks say...'
> ‘Van…,’ began Demon, but stopped — as he had begun and stopped a number of
> times before in the course of the last years. Some day it would have to be
> said, but this was not the right moment. He inserted his monocle and examined
> the bottles: ‘By the way, son, do you crave any of these aperitifs? My father
> allowed me Lilletovka and that Illinois Brat — awful bilge, antranou svadi, as
> Marina would say. I suspect your uncle has a cache behind the solanders in his
> study and keeps there a finer whisky than this usque ad Russkum. Well, let us
> have the cognac, as planned, unless you are a filius aquae?’
> (No pun intended, but one gets carried away and goofs.)
> ‘Oh, I prefer claret. I’ll concentrate (nalyagu) on the Latour later on. No,
> I’m certainly no T-totaler, and besides the Ardis tap water is not
> recommended!’ (1.38)
>
> [On the morning before his duel with Captain Tapper, a member of the Do-Re-La
> country club] Van was roused by the night porter who put a cup of coffee with
> a local 'eggbun' on his bedside table, and expertly palmed the expected
> chervonetz. He resembled somewhat Bouteillan as the latter had been ten years
> ago and as he had appeared in a dream, which Van now retrostructed as far as
> it would go: in it Demon's former valet explained to Van that the 'dor' in the
> name of an adored river [Ladore] equaled the corruption of hydro in
> 'dorophone.' Van often had word dreams. (1.42)
>
> Dor is also present in Dorofey and Dorofey Road in Kalugano: 'Where are we
> now, Johnny dear?' asked Van as they swung out of the lake's orbit and sped
> along a suburban avenue with clapboard cottages among laundry-lined pines.
> 'Dorofey Road,' cried the driver above the din of the motor. 'It abuts at the
> forest.' (Ibid.)
>
> He [Van] begged her [Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse] to
> massage his legs but she tested him with one glance of her grave, dark eyes -
> and delegated the task to Dorofey, a beefy-handed male nurse, strong enough to
> lift him bodily out of bed, with the sick child clasping the massive nape.
> (Ibid.)
>
> Tapper, tap and tapyor (ballroom pianist; silent film pianist) are related
> words. The author of A Ballroom Pianist and Woman from the Point of View of a
> Drunkard (the story signed Brat** moego brata, "my brother's brother,"*** in
> which girls under sixteen are compared to distilled water), in his story On
> Women (1886) Chekhov mentions the court counsellor Anafemski and the
> department watchman Dorofey:
>
> Логика женщины вошла в поговорку. Когда какой-нибудь надворный советник
> Анафемский или департаментский сторож Дорофей заводят речь о Бисмарке или о
> пользе наук, то любо послушать их: приятно и умилительно; когда же чья-нибудь
> супруга, за неимением других тем, начинает говорить о детях или пьянстве мужа,
> то какой супруг воздержится, чтобы не воскликнуть: «Затарантила таранта! Ну,
> да и логика же, господи, прости ты меня грешного!»
>
> On the other hand, tap water, Tapper and tapyor remind one of Mrs Tapirov,
> whose daughter Van recalls on the day preceding his duel with Tapper: He
> stared for a moment at the harps and the guitars and the flowers in silver
> vases on consoles receding in the dusk of looking-glasses, and recalled the
> schoolgirl whom he had longed for so keenly half a dozen years ago - Rose?
> Roza? Was that her name? Would he have been happier with her than with his
> pale fatal sister? (1.42)
>
> ...Dorofey, like Onegin's coachman, said priehali ('we have arrived') and
> gently propelled Van, past two screened beds, toward a third one near the
> window. (Ibid.)
>
> The name of Onegin's coachman (in Pushkin's drafts) is Ivan: Приехали! сказал
> Иван (One: LII: 9, variant). The only Dorofey mentioned by Pushkin is
> Yezerski's ancestor (who gave birth to 12 sons) in The Pedigree of my Hero
> (1836):
>
> От них два сына рождены:
> Якуб и Дорофей. В засаде
> Убит Якуб, а Дорофей
> Родил двенадцать сыновей.
>
> Pushkin's poem begins:
>
> Начнём ab ovo
> (Let's begin ab ovo).
>
> Ovum being Latin for "egg," one is reminded of the so-called Eggheads (1.3)
> and the local 'eggbun' the night porter brings Van with a cup of coffee
> (1.42). And yezero being obsolete form of ozero (lake), the name Yezerski
> brings to mind the Lakeview Hospital in Kalugano where Van recovers from the
> wound he received in his duel with Tapper.
>
> Dorofey rhymes with trofey (trophy), which can be easily turned into Trofim.
> Trofim Fartukov is the coachman in Ardis the Second. On the other hand, in a
> letter of June 12, 1891, to Lika Mizinova (nicknamed Jamais), Chekhov mentions
> the carter Trophim who would enlarge Lika's vocabulary with foul words:
>
> Сейчас получил от Вас письмо. Оно сверху донизу полно такими милыми
> выражениями, как "чёрт вас задави", "чёрт подери", "анафема", "подзатыльник",
> "сволочь", "обожралась" и т. п. Нечего сказать, прекрасное влияние имеют на
> Вас такие ломовые извозчики, как Trophim.
>
> Instead of signature, Chekhov drew a heart pierced with an arrow.
>
> *cf. Philip Rack, the composer of genius (and one of Ada's lovers), whom Van
> looks for in Kalugano and whom he eventually finds on a deathbed in the same
> Lakeview Hospital
> **cf. the Illinois Brat mentioned by Demon
> ***Aqua's last note is signed: My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is
> out of hell')
>
> Alexey Sklyarenko (who drinks from cap and uses cup as a head-gearlike, as
> many Russians do)
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/