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Re: Cinderella grays and an apish mistake
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In my posting on "Cinderella grays" I wrote that
Pnin himself is described as a "bespectacled old fellow with scholarly
strands of steel-gray hair falling over the right side of his small but
corrugated brow, and with a deep furrow descending from each side of his
sharp nose to each corner of his long upper-lip" .
Actually, I was led astray by the "upper-lip" to create an equally false
"Pnin Tvin" .
Here we have an anticipation of Pnin:
"In softness of features, body bulk, leanness of leg, apish shape of ear and
upper lip, Dr Pavel Pnin looked very like Timofey, as the latter was to look
three or four decades later. In the father, however, a fringe of
straw-coloured hair relieved a waxlike cavity".
The sentence I quoted fits in: "Pnin, not a very observant man in everyday
life, could not help becoming
aware (sometime during his ninth year at Waindell) that a lanky,
bespectacled old fellow with scholarly strands of steel-gray hair falling
over the right side of his small but corrugated brow, and with a deep furrow
descending from each side of his sharp nose to each corner of his long
upper-lip — a person whom Pnin knew as Professor Thomas Wynn, Head of the
Ornithology Department, having once talked to him at some party about gay
golden orioles, melancholy cuckoos, and other Russian countryside birds —
was not always Professor Wynn. At times he graded, as it were, into somebody
else, whom Pnin did not know by name but whom he classified, with a bright
foreigner's fondness for puns as 'Twynn' (or, in Pninian, 'Tvin'). "
Jansy Mello
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Pnin himself is described as a "bespectacled old fellow with scholarly
strands of steel-gray hair falling over the right side of his small but
corrugated brow, and with a deep furrow descending from each side of his
sharp nose to each corner of his long upper-lip" .
Actually, I was led astray by the "upper-lip" to create an equally false
"Pnin Tvin" .
Here we have an anticipation of Pnin:
"In softness of features, body bulk, leanness of leg, apish shape of ear and
upper lip, Dr Pavel Pnin looked very like Timofey, as the latter was to look
three or four decades later. In the father, however, a fringe of
straw-coloured hair relieved a waxlike cavity".
The sentence I quoted fits in: "Pnin, not a very observant man in everyday
life, could not help becoming
aware (sometime during his ninth year at Waindell) that a lanky,
bespectacled old fellow with scholarly strands of steel-gray hair falling
over the right side of his small but corrugated brow, and with a deep furrow
descending from each side of his sharp nose to each corner of his long
upper-lip — a person whom Pnin knew as Professor Thomas Wynn, Head of the
Ornithology Department, having once talked to him at some party about gay
golden orioles, melancholy cuckoos, and other Russian countryside birds —
was not always Professor Wynn. At times he graded, as it were, into somebody
else, whom Pnin did not know by name but whom he classified, with a bright
foreigner's fondness for puns as 'Twynn' (or, in Pninian, 'Tvin'). "
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm