Alexey Sklyarenko:Jurojin and Benten are two of the seven lucky gods (Shichifukujin) of
Japan... mentioned ...in the "Japanese" chapter of Jules Verne's "Around the
World in Eighty Days."
JM: I
forgot Alexey Sklyarenko's mention of Verne's novel in relation
to flavita pieces, Baron Klim von Avidov (anagram) and the lucky
pieces like a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurokin.
Jules Verne is present almost
from the start, when Uncle Dan "set off in a
counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe." and, later,
when Ada plans to travel by the New World Express "to the burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant’s Horn, a Villa in
Verna..." Great indication,
thanks!
Jupiter is often related to
Japan or to things Japanese.
Cf end of ch.3, pg. 520, when
Van "pounced upon her new, young, divine, Japanese
neck which he had been coveting like a veritable Jupiter Olorinus throughout the
evening." with its confabulated imagery of Ada's swanlike neck and
Jupiter as a swan.
The theme
of Leda and Jupiter was modernistically painted on the wall of
the Three Swans hotel*. Their
divine conjunction produced Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra and the
twins, Castor and Pollux.
Helen of
Troy herself is mentioned in the same chapter (p.530) close to lines
that were first quoted in "Spring in Fialta" ( "Tu sais que j'en vais
mourir").**
All of these are links that I'd
either forgotten or hadn't noticed before! (but the second reference to "tu
sais que j'en vais mourir", in Ada, was the most
striking) ***
Japan is also mentioned in connection to Dan's erotic
engravings:"trying numberless times to unlock with every key
in the house the cabinet in which Walter Daniel Veen kept ‘Jap. & Ind. erot.
prints’ as seen distinctly labeled through the glazed door...[Ada] had
still been rather hazy about the way human beings mated. She was very observant,
of course, and had closely examined various insects in copula, but at the
period discussed clear examples of mammalian maleness had rarely come to her
notice and had remained unconnected with any idea or possibility of sexual
function" and to a horseless trap, perhaps a rickshaw since "Uncle Dan once had a Japanese
valet." Uncle Dan’s
Oriental Erotica were "artistically second-rate and inept
calisthenically."
...and to butterflies (.p.85), again in the context of flavita: "Lying on his
stomach, leaning his cheek on his hand, Van looked at his love’s inclined neck
as she played anagrams with Grace, who had innocently suggested
‘insect.’...‘Incest,’
said Ada
instantly...But the glow of the afternoon had entered its most oppressive
phase...A pale diaphanous butterfly with a very black
body followed them and Ada cried ‘Look!’ and explained it was closely
related to a Japanese
Parnassian."
The author's reference to Ada's scientific acumen about mating butterflies, allied
to her infantile innocence about mammalian maleness and sexual
function, may reveal something about adult Nabokov's
etymological researches and his childhood experience as a lepidopterist.
Uncle Dan often reminds me of Nabokov's Uncle Ruka's fascinating world
travels.
How this relates to
Chateaubriand, a "phalène" ("butterfly dog"), incest/insect,
Ida, Parnassus, Jupiter and flavita...beats
me!
..................................................................................................................................
* - The hall of the Trois
Cygnes was renewed by Swiss-German Louis Wicht and in "the lounge, as seen through its entrance, the huge memorable oil —
three ample-haunched Ledas swapping lacustrine impressions — had been replaced
by a neoprimitive masterpiece showing three yellow eggs and a pair of plumber’s
gloves on what looked like wet bathroom
tiling."
Wicht/Witch? is: related to an
Argentinian city:" He decided that ...he would undertake long travels in South
America, Africa, India. As a boy of fifteen (Eric Veen’s age of
florescence)...From Manhattan, via Mephisto, El Paso, Meksikansk and the Panama
Chunnel, the dark-red New World Express reached Brazilia and Witch (or Viedma,
founded by a Russian admiral). There it split into two parts, the eastern one
continuing to Grant’s Horn, and the western returning north through Valparaiso
and Bogota. On alternate days the fabulous journey began in Yukonsk, a two-way
section going to the Atlantic seaboard, while another, via California and
Central America, roared into Uruguay. The dark blue African Express began in
London and reached the Cape by three different routes, through Nigero, Rodosia
or Ephiopia. Finally, the brown Orient Express joined London to Ceylon and
Sydney, via Turkey and several
Chunnels..."
** - Using simple google tools I got to
"The Children of the King a Tale of Southern Italy" by Marion
Crawford - fiction.
books.google.com.br/books?isbn=141794532X... I extracted a
quote: "Beatrice struck a few chords and then, looking at the Count with
half closed eyes, began to sing the pathetic little song of Chiquita. "On dit
que l'on the marie/ Tu sais que j'en vais mourir -" Her voice was very sweet and
true and there was real pathos in the words...But as she went on, San Miniato
noticed first that she repeated the second line..."
Using VN-L google, the items were a bit garbled (sometimes no
dates, no name...)
1. (2010, september) In Nabokov's story
the verses came from "some Parisian drama of
love," sung "by an old maiden aunt" of
his."...
2. In her 2010 PhD thesis, the translator of Spring in
Fialta, Graziela Schneider adds the usual explanatory notes. In one of
them, related to the lines in French "On dis que tu te maries, Tu sais que j'en
vai mourir -" she collects as possible references: Alfred de Musset's
Fréderic et Bernerette; Alphonse Daudet's Fromont jeune et Risler
ainé; a chanson by T. Cazorati (1871-18790 and Alexander Dumas Son in
L'Ami des femmes.
3. I understood VN had stopped using images
extracted from Greek-mythology in his short-stories after the thirties, but
in his novels, such as ADA and in TT these references are quite
frequent. I wonder if their occurrence is linked to the suggestive power of
their names and actions, after it gets transformed into scientific or
everyday words ( such as hymeneus=marriage, for example, as we find in VN's
translation of the French song ..."on dit que tu te marries, tu sais que
j"en vais mourir" in "Spring in Fialta", linking "hymen and death
evoked by the rythm...", cf. Stories, page 415)
*** - "Van was apt to
relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane
utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of
Hell.// ‘Castle True, Castle Bright!’ he now cried, ‘Helen of Troy, Ada of
Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!’...‘Ardis the First, Ardis the
Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet —’... ‘Oh! Qui me rendra mon
Hélène —’...‘— et le phalène.’."
Ada exclaims: "‘Je t’emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j’en
vais mourir.’." Dorothy Vinelander "gray-caped
and mannish-hatted, energetically beckoning with her unfurled umbrella,"
interrupts them ( Dolly is "mannish-hatted," like Garbo. How does this relate to
"Manhattan" and "Tanned Man in a Hat"?). From Vivien Darkbloom's index we
gather: p.111. Ma soeur te souvient-il encore:
first line of the third sextet of Chateaubriand’s Romance à Hélène (‘Combien
j’ai douce souvenance’) composed to an Auvergne tune that he heard during a trip
to Mont Dore in 1805 and later inserted in his novella Le Dernier Abencerage.
The final (fifth) sextet begins with ‘Oh! qui me rendra mon Hélène. Et ma
montagne et le grand chêne’ — one of the leitmotivs of the present
novel....
p.407. Olorinus: from Lat. olor, swan (Leda’s
lover).