Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021791, Thu, 7 Jul 2011 16:48:01 -0300

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Re: Lucette - tete
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Alexey Sklyarenko: "She [Lucette] complained to her governess who, completely misconstuing the whole matter (which could also be said of her new composition), summoned Van and from her screened bed, through a reek of embrocation and sweat, told him to refrain from turning Lucette's head by making of her a fairy-tale damsel in distress." (1.23)
Mlle Lariviere probably uses the phrase tourner la tete. As I pointed out before, this phrase was used by Pushkin in a four-line French poem written in 1821:
J'ai possede maitresse honette,
Je la servais comme il <lui> faut,
Mais je n'ai point tourne de tete, -
Je n'ai jamais vise si haut.

JM: In the translation of Pushkin's "French poem" the expression is, as you wrote down, "tourne de tete" (instead of la"), or was it a typo?

I wonder if Nabokov's original meaning concerning Mlle Lariviere's warning, clearly intended as signifying what A.Sklyarenko has set into French, is correctly stated in English by Nabokov.
Do Americans understand "to turn someone's head" as indicative of making a person feel confused, as is its meaning in French?

What turns my head are the twin planets Terra and Anti-terra. What is twinned and shared by them?

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