Dmitri
Nabokov wrote: Feathering,
Jansy, besides what oarsmen and certain birds (logically) do to
decrease drag on their blades or wings, and various other meanings, became
a widely used term with the advent of aviation... This ability can be important
in certain instances, e.g., feathering the blades of the propeller
(via rotation at the hub) on an inoperative engine so as
to minimize air resistance, etc.
Jansy to
Dmitri Nabokov: Thank you for your explanation. My curiosity was
aroused by certain possible uses for the word "feathering" by
your father. The motion has no apparent relation to birds or rowing
and oars, and yet describes the rower's and bird's motion of
the shoulder-blades when reversing the oars, or folding wings to
dive speedily.
In KQK there is a
beautiful example of this:
page 766/767
He yawned and rubbed the bridge
of his nose. Perhaps it would be wiser to change at once and then read for
half and hour on the terrace. Martha threw off her organge peignoir, and
as she drew back her elbows to adjust a necklace her angelically lovely
bare shoulder blades came together like folding
wings.
Mel Gibson's character as a policeman in a famous movie
series could extricate himself from ropes that bound him
tightly ( like Houdini?), because he suffered from a
common orthopaedic quirk that allowed him to dislodge his
shoulder-blades. In "Ada", Van Veen lost his maniambulatory
abilities because "a precious sinestral sinew had stopped
functioning" (quoting from memory) and he had problems with the
same shoulderblades.
I wonder if VN's wonderful exploration of this "magic shoulder trick" (
lying so close to the raised spinal hairs) indicates that he was also able to
perform the same.
Thank you, Dmitri, for the reply: RE classification of
the substantially
revised-in-translation KQK: maybe we could call it VN's
German novel.
There is are two corrections on former postings that I'm trying to fit in.
The first applies to "seasons": the Red Admiral in KQK was
spotted in Autumun, not during Summer.
The second has to do with German authors. I was uncertain if Baron
v. Munchhausen was the author of the ballad of "A Page in High Burgundy"
written by Borries v. Munchhausen. The original story-teller had served as
a page to the court of the Duke of Braunschweig, but he left no written
records. Carolyn Kunin solved the riddle for me. Borries
was a German poet who took advantage of Hitler's rise to advance his
position in the Prussian Academy and committed suicide when the Allied
armies advanced to his estate.
VN must have been amused by a Munchhausen writing about an
older namesake. At the time VN wrote KQK (in Russian,
1926/7) this German poet had not had occasion to write
in praise of Hitler, adding a particular edge to VN's
satire.
I don't know if his verses are quoted in the Russian and German
edition, or only in the edition in English.
JM
addressing mainly S K-B: To exhaust ( drain off/ "esgotar") my
contribution on "gutter-percher" ( that, according to Victor Fet's
explanation must simply imply something "flexible and pliable like
rubber" ) :
I forgot to add that there is a piece of fabric named "sarja/sarjeta" that
is woven with silk thread forming diagonal welts across the cloth that
looks similar to the "gutter" surgical incision. In English it is
named "sarge" ( or "serge") and its derivation apparently comes from the Chinese
for silk, no relation at all to the Malayan "guta-percha", although diagonal
identations are found linked to both. These are rather curious
"coincidences", if my poor dictionaries have been behaving
properly ...