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[NABOKOV LIST] QUERY: Ash Wednesday,
fingers and ashes: what's the riddle?
fingers and ashes: what's the riddle?
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Dear List
In "The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov" (1995), La Veneziana, on page 106, a sentence convokes the reader:
"with a delicate rotary rubbing of his finger alterady familiar to the reader, he was sprinkling a pinch of ground tar..."
Twelve pages before, on page 94, indeed there is:
" the Colonel and McGore stopped...the latter pensively picking some dry gray pollenlike matter out of his nostril and scattering it with a light rolling rub of his fingers."
But something really did happen in the castle, as the narrator observes: "Left alone the gardener gave a disapproving shake of his head as he looked at the matted lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of five fingers..." (page 114) before, a few lines later, he addresses the reader again:
"...Thus the dry wrinkled fruit the gardener happened to find remains the only riddle of this whole tale..."
What is there before the dark lemon is found on the grass?
"Simpson...entered the painting...There was a scent of myrtle and of wax, with a very faint whiff of lemon (and)... a real, Venetian, Maureen - lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small lemon... he accepted the yellow fruit from her hand, and, as soon as he felt its firm, roughish coolness and the dry warmth of her long fingers, an incredible bliss came to a boil within him... It was then that a sudden terror made him compress the cold little lemon. The enchantment had dissolved..." ( pages 110/111).
Query: Wherein lies the riddle?
In the literary existence of a dark lemon found on the grass?
In a casual remark about the imprint of five fingers left on its rough cool surface? (Are these fearful imprints "more real" than the described lemon?)
Who is dellusional: McGore? Simpson? The reader?
Btw: Goethe's famous lines about Italy and melancholy recollections could have been alluded here? ( "Wilhelm Meister":MIGNON) They seem to have no bearing with the "La Veneziana's" story, with the exception of the clear references to Italy, lemons and myrtle.
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In "The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov" (1995), La Veneziana, on page 106, a sentence convokes the reader:
"with a delicate rotary rubbing of his finger alterady familiar to the reader, he was sprinkling a pinch of ground tar..."
Twelve pages before, on page 94, indeed there is:
" the Colonel and McGore stopped...the latter pensively picking some dry gray pollenlike matter out of his nostril and scattering it with a light rolling rub of his fingers."
But something really did happen in the castle, as the narrator observes: "Left alone the gardener gave a disapproving shake of his head as he looked at the matted lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of five fingers..." (page 114) before, a few lines later, he addresses the reader again:
"...Thus the dry wrinkled fruit the gardener happened to find remains the only riddle of this whole tale..."
What is there before the dark lemon is found on the grass?
"Simpson...entered the painting...There was a scent of myrtle and of wax, with a very faint whiff of lemon (and)... a real, Venetian, Maureen - lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small lemon... he accepted the yellow fruit from her hand, and, as soon as he felt its firm, roughish coolness and the dry warmth of her long fingers, an incredible bliss came to a boil within him... It was then that a sudden terror made him compress the cold little lemon. The enchantment had dissolved..." ( pages 110/111).
Query: Wherein lies the riddle?
In the literary existence of a dark lemon found on the grass?
In a casual remark about the imprint of five fingers left on its rough cool surface? (Are these fearful imprints "more real" than the described lemon?)
Who is dellusional: McGore? Simpson? The reader?
Btw: Goethe's famous lines about Italy and melancholy recollections could have been alluded here? ( "Wilhelm Meister":MIGNON) They seem to have no bearing with the "La Veneziana's" story, with the exception of the clear references to Italy, lemons and myrtle.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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