Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010305, Fri, 27 Aug 2004 09:12:08 -0700

Subject
Fwd: TT-14 Introductory Notes
Date
Body
EDNOTE. As mentioned your editor is is the midst of computer crisis and general
confusion. Apparently TT-14 did not go out earlier. Comments on both TT-14 & 15
are welcome. If your contributions do not appear within 24 hours, please let me
know.
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----- Forwarded message from a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp -----
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 08:09:42 +0900
From: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>


49.06-09: three young athletes, Jack, Jake, and Jacques, whose copper faces
he had seen grinning around her in one of the latest photographs of the
fourth album: The athletic J-boy trio enters the stage as if emerging from
one of Armande's albums. We heard from Mme. Chamar that they all "fitted."
Jacques is a bobsled champion, but we do not know how the Blake twins fit.

49.10-11: his Adam's apple: Adam and apple reintroduce the Eden motif.

49.16-19: *monsieur* should change into sturdier brogues, but Hugh retorted
that in the States one hiked in any old pair of shoes, even sneakers: Next
morning, Hugh changes the shoes following his advice. Cf. "The climb he
contemplated could not be accomplished in town shoes: the first and only
time he had attempted to do so, he had kept losing his footing on slippery
slabs of rock" (Ch. 22).

49.21: tempo turns: Parallel turns (from Brian Boyd's notes to LoA TT).

50.26: a pearl of sweat: A fairy-tale element in concert with the last
paragraph. Cf. "pearls into a blindman's cup/cap" (Ch. 12).

50.34: a bench, eyeless but eager, faced an admirable view: The bench is to
give HP a chance to embrace Armande. "'I hate life. I hate myself. I hate
that beastly old bench.' She stopped to look the way his fierce finger
pointed, and he embraced her" (Ch. 15). "eyeless": suggests HP's or living
people's blindness.

50.35-51.01: his party very high above him, blue, gray, pink, red: Cf.
"Armande in a pink parka" (Ch. 12).

51.15-16: weird-looking, reptile-green things: "Reptile-green" is also the
color of ink used for erasures and insertions on the pages of *Faust in
Moscow*. The color suggests the hidden connection between Giulia and
Armande. They will be one in HP's dream (Ch. 20).

51.16-18: Their elaborate bindings looked like first cousins of orthopedic
devices meant to help a cripple to walk: reflects HP's unconscious fear of
breaking legs? Cf. "their cruel ice axes and coils of rope and other
instruments of torture (equipment exaggerated by ignorance)" (Ch. 23); If we
believe Armande's "boasting," she broke both legs in her childhood (Ch. 17).
Perhaps while she was skiing?

51.18-20: He was allowed to shoulder those precious skis, which at first
felt miraculously light but soon grew as heavy as great slabs of malachite,
under which he staggered: reminds me of the legend of St. Christopher.

51.24: (four small oranges): Some of them will be eaten in "a nice mossy
spot" hidden by the trees and the peel will mark the place for Armande's
next date (Ch. 15).

51.26-27: A fairy-tale element seemed to imbue with its Gothic rose water
all attempts to scale the battlements of her Dragon: HP's painful climbing
as far as the cable car of Draconita is, on another level of the novel, a
prince's exciting adventure of freeing a princess from a Dragon. "Gothic"
also directs our notice to some elements of Gothic romances in the
novel--"the dungeon" (Ch. 6), "a sleeping beauty on a great platter," "a
choice of tools on a cushion," (Ch. 16), "Chart of Torture" (Ch. 23), and a
lot of fires as Don Johnson and John Rea have discussed.

Akiko Nakata

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