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Re: Amsterdam
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Sklyarenko:In my yesterday's post I remembered the mention of New Amsterdam in Ada, but forgot about the Old. Telling Van about her 'dramatic career', Ada says: "he [Bosch] too was hooted by hack hoods in much older Amsterdams, and look how three hundred years later every Poppy Group pup copies him! I still think I have talent, but then maybe I'm confusing the right podhod (approach) with talent, which doesn't give a dry fig for rules deduced from past art." (2.9)
JM: A.S dwelt on "podhod + hood = pohod + dohod", Klopots, hlopoty... There are other interesting phonemes in the quote he chose: several with "o" and "oo." followed by explosive "poppy...pup copies."
I was reminded of another sentence playing with "grope" and "groote" (which will bring us back to Amsterdam or, at least, to things Dutch). There is Uncle Dan, cartoonlike, in "an overstuffed chair...trying to read...an article apparently devoted to oystering in a Dutch-language illustrated paper...but a second later had to look up 'groote,' which he had been groping for when disturbed. The simplicity of its meaning annoyed him."
Why do you think that The Netherlands recurrently loom in "Ada," from the Veen surname to Uncle Dan's Dutch picture collections? Decadence, neverlands, genitals, swamps, old masters ... to me these are insufficient to explain the importance they seem to have in the novel.
Changing subjects: I suggested that Kinbote might be a character in charge of pulling in Nabokov's poem (ie, "Pale Fire, by John Shade"), into a novel ("Pale Fire"). I imagined that he'd need Gradus to help him to kill Shade to effect its transition into "fiction."*
I tried to find the author's name in connection to Gradus but, unlike Slyarenko, there's always a remaining string of meaningless letters in my hand ( as when I mix the letters in "Jakob Vinogradus" to find "Nabokov" - and there's "i gradus" and an additional "y or j" from his initials). After all Gradus is also called Leningradus. He is attached to the Soviets, and these are the real killers who transformed Sirin's Russian poetry into something else, an echo, a reflection**...
By inverting the letters in "Jakob Gradus" we get to "Sudarg (of) Bokay," who created "a triptych of bottomless light, a really fantastic mirror, signed with a diamond by its maker."*** We know that a feigned remoteness, a false azure will create John Shade's three "I" (the shadow, a smudge of ashen fluff, a life that's can only exist in a mirrored sky...). Gradus also suffers from a triptychal split ["Vinogradus had never seen such a display of lightning, neither had Jacques d'Argus - or Jack Grey, for that matter (let us not forget Jack Grey!)."] If Nabokov, by abandoning his Russian poems and writing in English, suffered a "split", what would be the third element, as the insistent image of "three" seems to indicate?
...........................................................................................................................................................................
* His approach synchronized with Shade's work on Pale Fire. He stays for a while in Nice (of all places!) and it's where he finds out about the King's address. Killing John Shade, as it appears in the index, was his "crowning blunder."
** Jakob Gradus (variously Jack Degree, Jacques de Grey, James de Gray ...Ravus, Ravenstone, d'Argus.) has "a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus." He is also named Leningradus and, although "the world needs Gradus"..."Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people..."
*** Why did Nabokov place "of" and bent in the middle his perfect palindrome?
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JM: A.S dwelt on "podhod + hood = pohod + dohod", Klopots, hlopoty... There are other interesting phonemes in the quote he chose: several with "o" and "oo." followed by explosive "poppy...pup copies."
I was reminded of another sentence playing with "grope" and "groote" (which will bring us back to Amsterdam or, at least, to things Dutch). There is Uncle Dan, cartoonlike, in "an overstuffed chair...trying to read...an article apparently devoted to oystering in a Dutch-language illustrated paper...but a second later had to look up 'groote,' which he had been groping for when disturbed. The simplicity of its meaning annoyed him."
Why do you think that The Netherlands recurrently loom in "Ada," from the Veen surname to Uncle Dan's Dutch picture collections? Decadence, neverlands, genitals, swamps, old masters ... to me these are insufficient to explain the importance they seem to have in the novel.
Changing subjects: I suggested that Kinbote might be a character in charge of pulling in Nabokov's poem (ie, "Pale Fire, by John Shade"), into a novel ("Pale Fire"). I imagined that he'd need Gradus to help him to kill Shade to effect its transition into "fiction."*
I tried to find the author's name in connection to Gradus but, unlike Slyarenko, there's always a remaining string of meaningless letters in my hand ( as when I mix the letters in "Jakob Vinogradus" to find "Nabokov" - and there's "i gradus" and an additional "y or j" from his initials). After all Gradus is also called Leningradus. He is attached to the Soviets, and these are the real killers who transformed Sirin's Russian poetry into something else, an echo, a reflection**...
By inverting the letters in "Jakob Gradus" we get to "Sudarg (of) Bokay," who created "a triptych of bottomless light, a really fantastic mirror, signed with a diamond by its maker."*** We know that a feigned remoteness, a false azure will create John Shade's three "I" (the shadow, a smudge of ashen fluff, a life that's can only exist in a mirrored sky...). Gradus also suffers from a triptychal split ["Vinogradus had never seen such a display of lightning, neither had Jacques d'Argus - or Jack Grey, for that matter (let us not forget Jack Grey!)."] If Nabokov, by abandoning his Russian poems and writing in English, suffered a "split", what would be the third element, as the insistent image of "three" seems to indicate?
...........................................................................................................................................................................
* His approach synchronized with Shade's work on Pale Fire. He stays for a while in Nice (of all places!) and it's where he finds out about the King's address. Killing John Shade, as it appears in the index, was his "crowning blunder."
** Jakob Gradus (variously Jack Degree, Jacques de Grey, James de Gray ...Ravus, Ravenstone, d'Argus.) has "a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus." He is also named Leningradus and, although "the world needs Gradus"..."Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people..."
*** Why did Nabokov place "of" and bent in the middle his perfect palindrome?
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/