Hafid Bouazza suggests that the road-map from Axel Roy's
portrait of Nabokov is "the painting is inspired by the description of
the suburban map in Despair, chapter three," letting us a glimpse into a
metaphysical graph from "the city of Berlin, which
is outside the picture, maybe imagined somewhere in the vicinity of my left
elbow.[...] My wristwatch is the small town of Koenigsdorf,[...]where there is
another circle (the lower button of my waistcoat)"
JM: One can trust a Bouazza for the most recondite
and apposite finds! This particular one, by Hafid, differs from the
oft dismembered Shade and, even, from Nabokov's dispersal
over the planet in "Strong Opinions." The words "in the
vicinity of my left elbow" might have become a prophetic
crooked "Bend Sinister".
Although there's no Axel Rex in this Berlin
novel, there's Ardalion, also a painter who, like Axel,
is a third element in the novel's love-triangle (the curious
thing is that he's unable to draw Hermann’s face, particularly his
shifty poisson d'avril** eyes.)
.......................................................................
* - In Pale Fire (lines 148/156) Shade writes that he "felt distributed
through space and time:/One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand/Under the pebbles of a panting
strand,/One ear in
Italy, one eye in Spain,/In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain./There were dull throbs in my
Triassic; green/ Optical spots in Upper Pleistocene,/An icy shiver down my Age of
Stone,/ And all tomorrows in my funnybone."
** - SES writes: "The April Fool's joke that deposited
a foot of snow on the promising green spikes in my yard last Friday was
repeated, a few hours later, by the death of my router, so there was a slight
interruption in service. All posts have now been posted,
however." Welcome back, Beth and I hope that this
snowy foot has disappeared by now and that your yard begins
to flourish again!
-----Mensagem Original-----
Enviada em: sábado, 2 de abril de 2011
17:29
Assunto: Re: [NABOKV-L] Subject:,travail
graphique sur Nabokov
It seems to me that the painting is inspired by the description
of the suburban map in Despair, chapter three:
Let us suppose I am holding that map before me; then the city of
Berlin, which is outside the picture, maybe imagined somewhere in the vicinity
of my left elbow.[...]the railway line, which, metaphysically at least, runs
along my sleeve cuffward from Berlin. My wristwatch is the small town of
Koenigsdorf,[...]where there is another circle (the lower button of my
waistcoat): Eichenberg.[...]the main road, leaves it and continues nirth
alone, straight to the village of Waldau (the nail of my left
thumb).
Best,
Hafid Bouazza