From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Anthony Stadlen
Sent: 05 December 2013 11:08
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Shelley on Mont Blanc... II

Robert  Roper: "What was the Shelleyan effect upon VN of encountering the American sublime, in the form of the Rockies and other Western landscapes he cherished first for their butterflies?"

 

Jansy Mello: The only novelistic reference that I remember relates to "Lolita" (but Quilty intervened and, besides, should we trust HH?).  

"I remember as a child in Europe gloating over a map of North America that had "Appalachian Mountains" boldly running from Alabama up to New Brunswick, so that the whole region they spanned — Tennessee, the Virginias, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, appeared to my imagination as a gigantic Switzerland or even Tibet, all mountain, glorious diamond peak upon peak, giant conifers, le montagnard émigré in his bear skin glory, and Felis tigris goldsmithi, and Red Indians under the catalpas. That it all boiled down to a measly suburban lawn and a smoking garbage incinerator, was appalling. Farewell, Appalachia! Leaving it, we crossed Ohio, the three states beginning with "I," and Nebraska — ah, that first whiff of the West!"  

 

It would be nice to read VN's testimonies about the "American sublime" that were unrelated to his passion for butterflies.* 

 

    

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* - (1)  http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/LolitaUSA/LoUSNab.htm

Cf. Nabokov's Summer Trips to the West, 1941-1953

 

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(2) In his letter 279 (written in August 14,1956) Nabokov writes to Wilson that "we moved on to higher altitudes in Wyoming and Montana. Incidentally, in one of his letters to Fliess the Viennese Sage mentions a young patient who masturbated in the w.c of the Interlaken hotel in a special contracted position so as to be able to glimpse (now comes the Viennese Sage's curative explanation) the Jungfrau. He should have been a young Frenchman in a Wyoming motel with a view of the Tetons."  

(Jungfrau in German means "virgin". Wiki informs that "The Teton Range (the Rocky Mountains in North America)...on the Wyoming side of the state's border with Idaho, just south of Yellowstone National Park....Early French voyageurs gave the name "les Trois Tétons" (the three breasts)." (copied from VN-L archives)

 

 

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