What an unusual observation Eric! I don't know if you're socialising with a superior class of cat than I, but your average indeterminate moggie is invariably a green-eyed beast 'round these parts. I've just gone and scraped one of mine off a beanbag to inspect her in the natural light to be absolutely sure. I wouldn't say emerald, but you really couldn't call it anything other than green. I suspect you're right, but rather that VN is gesturing towards the general literary-mythic quality of cats' eyes, of which their greenness or otherwise is just one aspect.
My guess is that it might be irony, that is, VN is hinting that green-eyed cats is a literary cliché. Another possibility that the perception of green eyes is a subjective reflex of the ambient lighting—certainly a familiar theme in Nabokov. I’ve been around cats all my life and have yet to see a green-eyed one (Siamese cats really do, however, have blue eyes).
Eric Hyman
Professor of English
Department of English
Butler 133
Fayetteville State University
1200 Murchison Road
Fayetteville, NC 28301-4252
(910) 672-1901
ehyman@uncfsu.edu
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU]
On Behalf Of Jansy Mello
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2014 3:03 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Cat's eyes
In Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lectures on Literature”, on the chapter on Dickens (Bowers,p.120), when he notes that Krook “comes slowly up, with his green-eyed cat following at his heels” he adds: “All cats have green eyes – but notice how green these eyes are owing to the lighted candle slowly ascending the stairs.” His own eyes were greenish (or hazel?), Lolita’s were “vair” (grey-green while Lucette’s were a definite catty emerald green.
In RLSK we encounter a vanishing cat with “celadon” eyes ( a bluish/green/grey colored porcelain), so it seems that VN admitted variations in feline eye-coloring. Why then did VN assure his students that “all cats have green eyes”?
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