Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010759, Thu, 9 Dec 2004 13:18:00 -0800

Subject
TT-16. JDN comments on John Rea comments
Date
Body
MessageEDNOTE. As most of you doubtless know, Dmitir Nabokov is the Italian translator of TT. Akiko Nakata, the driving force behind the NABOKV-L TT project, is the co-translator of the Japanese version.
We soon come to the final chapter.26).
After that I would like to throw the discussion open to questions that engage the work as a whole (or at least beyond the limits of a single chapter. Should anyone care to announce particular themes in advance, please do so.

----- Original Message -----
From: DN
To: 'D. Barton Johnson'
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 12:53 PM
Subject: FW: Repost missing TT-16. John Rea comments


Dear Don,

My usual pedantic insertion (in John's excellent commentary): although the two are intimate relatives, Guido the name ends in"o" (it has no common female form) but "guida" the guide, while conserving the masculine gender, has a final "a," takes a feminine article and feminine proximate participles and adjectives ("la vecchia guida è caduta dalla cima del Cervino insieme al suo "cliente ["the old guide fell from the summit of the Matterhorn together with his client"]. Please don't ask me why "al suo" tends to revert to the masculine (if it's a female client, of course it won't). Maybe some Italian will know; maybe not. The verb guido, on the other hand, means "I drive" or "I guide."

DN

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Klein [mailto:sk@starcapital.net]
Sent: jeudi, 9. décembre 2004 16:05
To: Cangrande@BlueWin.ch
Subject: Fwd: Repost missing TT-16. John Rea comments


From: Donald B. Johnson [mailto:chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 9:44 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Repost missing TT-16. John Rea comments



Therefore I repost for all who wish it:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Akiko Nakata" <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp> > To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> > Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 12:12 AM > Subject: TT-16 Introductory Notes > My first or second thought on wordings of Chapter 16. If you need to classify what I am doing, I suppose you could call it "reader response"
theoretical. I have no divine communications from the beyond from fathers and antipodean spirits, nor from extant sons. Although I have always been good at spelling, my computer is less so, and frequently introduces obvious misprints: I beg that you cooperate in correcting these in your copy! In material already given by Akita, I'm snipping out any of it that does not lead directly to my remarks.

John

>
> 57.04: Guy: Another anonymous-like name. His full name is possibly Guy > Person

.
Also, as someone else has said, the name is short for "Guido", = 'guide.
It also impresses me as having a homosexual overtone, as I have it used ("Hey, Guy! with the second word lengthened __ I started to say "dragged out"!) as a greeting.

>

> 58.26-28: winning in a mist of well-being the Davis cup brimming with the > poppy: Cf. "Humbert imagines Dolly to be a tennis champion and himself her > husband and coach: "Dolores, with two rackets under her arm, in Wimbledon.

> Dolores endorsing a Dromedary.> Dolores turning professional.

Used in reference to females, the word "professional" in this often implies prostitution.

> Dolores acting a girl champion in a movie.
> Dolores and her gray, humble, hushed husband-coach, old Humbert" (II.20).
>
> 60.07-12: he would find himself trying to stop or divert a trickle of grain > or fine gravel from a rift of the texture of space. . . . He was finally


One is reminded of the tale of the little Dutch boy stemming the flow of water from a hole in the dike (no humor intended), and The "Magician's apprentice trying in vain to stop the flow he has started -- inclluding but not limited to the version with Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia"

60.17 "the valleys of Toss and Thurn." A word play on the princes of Thurn and Taxis who "enjoyed the privilege of a postal monopoly before the formation of the German empire, and thus before introduction of modern postal systems in the nineteenth century. The beginnings of this probably date back into the late middle ages in Northern Italy. In addition to another bit of play with Nabokov's sleep problems, there is probably also here a word game involving the Swiss city of Thun, (which I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with by taking a regularly scheduled boat from Thun to Interlaken in 1950, for which one's train tricket is valid: very beautirul ride. (I have wondered if this postal system "inspired" the one in _Crying of Lot 69_)

60.20 "Dream-man" contains "Armande". Also, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Hugh's troubled sleep reflects that of Nabkov: and of Lewis Carroll and of James Joyce.

>
> 60.35-61.03: He was advised that in calling her by her first name one simply > meant to induce an informal atmosphere. One always did that. Only yesterday > one had put another prisoner completely > at ease by saying: The peculiar

> first person "one" is used by a character other than Armande for the >first time.

Actually not so peculiar. In everyday spoken French, not in "polished discourse" the verbal paradigm is normally simplified, in part by using "on" plus a third person singular verb form in place of a first person plural. We recall that in the majority of French verbs in the present tense there is no audible ending in the three persons of the singular, and typically likewish the third plural. In a casual conversation with close acquaintances (and in an number of other situations) the second person singular is used in address, rather than the "polite" second person plural. (Others devices assist in this simplification: "Ca coute cher aujourd'hui les diamants". Forgive my computer's inaccented
French.)

61.19-20 "Clarissa Dark". Another female psychoanalyst (probably of Freudian persuasion), possibly a colleague of Blanche Schwartzmann and Melanie Weiss whom Nabokov has introduced elsewhere, all with the black versus white names, and possibly based on the actual psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

Thanks for listening.

John

> ----- End forwarded message -----
>

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