Subject
Re: [Fwd: Swooners and swooning in Lolita]
From
Date
Body
Hello, Beth
What a wonderful collection of swooners in Lolita. Some variations of their meaning puzzled me, though.
You mentioned that HH 'identifies several denizens of the hotel with the romantic word “swoon...”.
But when 'the desk clerk, “Mr. Swine,” is transformed by consonantal rhyme into “pink pig Mr. Swoon” the next morning' the "romance" seems to have faded away. Do you have any idea why HH distorted this word from its original romantic sense? Is it possible to surmise that -already at this point - HH tried to expell from his conscience a guilty sensation of behaving like a "swine" or be conscious of his "swooning" moral sense?
The expression "to fall into a swoon" sounds a bit "Victorian" and that's why I wonder if HH applied this word to his own bliss,ecstasies and fainting raptures and not just to outsiders, in a kind of derision?
I was looking for synonims for swooners and howlers because I remembered a booklet with a collection of these under a title that included another word ("boner") then applied to silly mistakes found in the newspapers. I'll quote one I found in the internet, only because it seems to fit into our theme about errors of "translation":
" If you are chased by a dog when walking, jogging, or bicycling, stop, turn toward the dog, point, and firmly say "No!" or "Go home!". Repeat as needed. This is effective even for dogs that do not speak English".
Nabokov often described bodily expressions with some relish. Many gestures, like "pointing and making noises" to a dog do not require a "translation" - even though they still need to be correctly interpreted - unlike what happend with poor Gradus who could not copy the coded sign because he didn't realize Charles II was left-handed...
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
What a wonderful collection of swooners in Lolita. Some variations of their meaning puzzled me, though.
You mentioned that HH 'identifies several denizens of the hotel with the romantic word “swoon...”.
But when 'the desk clerk, “Mr. Swine,” is transformed by consonantal rhyme into “pink pig Mr. Swoon” the next morning' the "romance" seems to have faded away. Do you have any idea why HH distorted this word from its original romantic sense? Is it possible to surmise that -already at this point - HH tried to expell from his conscience a guilty sensation of behaving like a "swine" or be conscious of his "swooning" moral sense?
The expression "to fall into a swoon" sounds a bit "Victorian" and that's why I wonder if HH applied this word to his own bliss,ecstasies and fainting raptures and not just to outsiders, in a kind of derision?
I was looking for synonims for swooners and howlers because I remembered a booklet with a collection of these under a title that included another word ("boner") then applied to silly mistakes found in the newspapers. I'll quote one I found in the internet, only because it seems to fit into our theme about errors of "translation":
" If you are chased by a dog when walking, jogging, or bicycling, stop, turn toward the dog, point, and firmly say "No!" or "Go home!". Repeat as needed. This is effective even for dogs that do not speak English".
Nabokov often described bodily expressions with some relish. Many gestures, like "pointing and making noises" to a dog do not require a "translation" - even though they still need to be correctly interpreted - unlike what happend with poor Gradus who could not copy the coded sign because he didn't realize Charles II was left-handed...
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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