Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0018871, Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:16:06 -0200

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[NABOKOV-L] From TOoL's lyric backs to KQK's Lollobrigida
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Lyrate lyric bodies have the suppleness of Lollobrigida's wasp-waist. This is why I set myself the task of recovering data on "King Queen Knave" ( starred by Gina L.)*, tibits about movies and the novel.

In Nabokov's Dark Cinema (Alfred Appel) we find the following dialogues:
"... While scripting Lolita in Hollywood, the Nabokovs attended a dinner party at David Selznick's luxurious house. Billy Wilder was there, and Gina Lollobrigida, too.
"She speaks excellent French," says Nabokov.
"It wasn't that good," interupts Mrs. Nabokov.
They were also introduced to a tall, rugged fellow.
"And what do you do ?" inquired Nabokov.
"I'm in pictures," answered John Wayne ..."
These were mentioned by Brian Boyd (AA,p.407) a little differently: "At another party Nabokov met an attractive brunette to whom he spoke French, and told her she had a wonderful Paris accent. "Parisian, hell," replried Gina Lollobrigida. "It's Roman French." He did not always put his foot in it..."

The Kyoto circle finds Gina ( in her movie "Trapeze") in "Ada" - perhaps linked to KQK's "Gutter-Perchers"?
CF: 51.22-23: the flying Italian lady
She might be associated with the image of Gina Lollobrigida, a movie actress from Italy, in Trapeze (1956). vnjapan.org/main/ada/ada2.html .

In the amusing translation I first read KQK ("imps" became "diabetes", a misprint of "diabretes") "omoplates" abound, although in English they are mostly "shoulder blades", untubbed and dry, even in the sentence I'd been looking for: "Martha threw off her orange peignoir, and as she drew back her elbows to adjust a necklace, her angelically lovely bare shoulder blades came together like folding wings"

KQK has many harlequinades, caroussel headaches and spinnings. There are arab slave-traders and hindu princes, conjurors like Menetek-El-Pharsin, ridiculous masked Dreyer popping into Franz's lovemaking to Martha. Ridiculous contorsions (like old Enricht on all fours in front of a cheval glass). Ch. 7 has a Flora reference: "The reason Martha did not want a car...to lessons in rhythmic inclinations and gesticulations ("Flora, accept these lilies' or "Let us unfold our veils in the wind')...By taking these precautions...she transposed or curtailed or missed altogether those delightful contortions and scattering of invisible flowers..."

The familiar iterations are revealing: "its hubbub comprised the hollow hum of irksome human thoughts" or the amusing lapsus: "I shall get new spectables. I mean respectacles."
Franz, like Flora's Julian, exhibits an "endearing contrast between his thin body and one cocked part of it, shortish but exceptionally thick."


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* King, queen, knave
Author:Jerzy Skolimowski; Gina Lollobrigida; David Niven; John Moulder-Brown; Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov; All authors
Embassy Home Entertainment, 1984.


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