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Re: [NABOKOV-LIST] [Translation]natasha
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JM: "his (Khrenov's) hearing is acute and he fore-hears his daughter's return from the street and his neighbour's outing"
Laurence Hochard: I don't think it's a question of acute hearing; in fact, the man can guess, foresee future events. There are several examples of his "gift" in the story:
First, he announces: "I do know perfectly well that I'll die tomorrow".
Secondly, BEFORE he can hear anything, he says: "Natasha is back" and VN adds: "A MOMENT LATER, somewhere FAR OFF, the lock of the front door clinked...( 2 clues given by VN to indicate that Khrenov can't possibly know in a rational way that Natasha is back since she is still in the street when he says that; she opens the front door only a moment later.
Thirdly, VN makes no mention of any noise when "Khrenov observed indifferently: "Wolfe has gone out to dinner"
And finally, Khrenov tells Natasha: "There's something fabulous in the paper today" whereas in fact, he hasn't read it yet since he asks his daughter to go and get some money to buy it.
So, in addition to being a sick old man haunted by terrible memories, I wonder whether Khrenov isn't some kind of sorcerer who can "see" in a trance what is taking place now (the killings...) in the country he has left.
laurence hochard
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 23:31:18 -0300From: jansy@AETERN.USSubject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-LIST] [Translation] the card's fat worm metamorphoses...To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Anthony Stadlen: "I second Jansy's approval of SES's suggestion to discuss "Natasha", which I haven't even read yet. But I will be continuing writing soon about "Signs and Symbols", and I hope others will too."
Laurence Hochard [ SES: "It's unusual for VN to make a female character the center of consciousness in a story, particularly when the plot emphasizes her desirability"] adds that: "It seems very true to me ; however, I can think of another story written from the woman's perspective ("with a third person limited omniscient narrator") and it is the one that has just been discussed here: Signs and Symbols; although of course the woman has no "obvious beauty", to quote "...That in Aleppo Once...".
JM: I just finished reading "Natasha" which vaguely reminded me of VN's 1924 semi-fables:"Gods",("Sounds", "Wingstroke"), " Matter of Chance" - a flickering mood that almost clashed into incongruency - like in some kind of drug-induced state. My first impression was of "Colors"...I counted fourteen variations of "blue", two or three "red","yellow","black","white","green","beige", "gray". One "turquoise", one "emerald" & also golden, bronze and silver. The story itself, though, felt mainly as in "gray and white" with one "orange-hued" wind music. The Baron, with his "light-blue head like a bull" seemed, to Natasha, "all blue, as blue as the evening" in her "blue mist of happiness." Still, I couldn't see this story as arising mainly "from the woman's perspective" (with a third person limited omniscient narrator), although I cannot really disagree with that description, nor with SES's "female character as the center of consciousness". As if the narrator's hazy haloed presence made itself felt side by side to Natasha?
The story describes a sick old man in agony and two lovers, smiling away reality in their cumplicitous hallucinatory mood and denial.
Although the bulky, "somewhat corpulent" Baron Wolfe climbs the stairs "laboriously", his mood is sprightly. His head is shaven "pale blue". He is not yet thirty. He is blushingly in love with Natasha, the dying man's daughter and they live in exile in a strange city after old Khrenov's two sons were killed. The old man is feverish and haunted by memories of fighting, of crossing a bridge, of sawdust and sand close to a lumber mill. His hearing is acute and he fore-hears his daughter's return from the street and his neighbour's outing. He seems to be searching for a lost object and once he appears lying prone on the floor, nauseated with a spinning head, to look for it under his daughter's knobbly couch ( a tin toy, perhaps?)
Baron Wolfe carries a cigar case and in the old man's room there is a table "littered with cigarette stubs". Who smoked them?
Two enchanting details called my attention: "As usually happens when the weather is mentioned, the others looked out the window. That made a bluish-gray vein on Khrenov's neck contract"..."Natasha counted the drops, and her eyelashes kept time."
Natasha's hair is twice described as "sleek" ( "he caught sight from overhead of the sleek, girlish part in her hair." ..."Her sleek dark hair was beaded with rain and under her eyes there were adorable blue shadows.")
Baron Wolfe recognizes that he is sustained by grandiose fantasies, similar to Natasha's who saw the Virgin Mary cross the room with a pail like Cinderella and, later, with baby and agitated cherubs. He wonders if " Am I really lying when I pass off my fantasies as truth?" after he confesses that his inventions are inspired by the drab experience of friends, such as one who lived in bombastic Bombay. He asks: "Which of us really visited India?" because the Baron allows words to carry him away into a world of sensations.
I wonder about the word "formication", how it sounds in Russian ( "formica": related to antlike tingling or numbness). "shoo away the silken formication that was making her involuntarily compress her knees and shut her eyes." The description is as erotic as in "fornication"...
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