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Fw: queue
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Dear List,
In "Lolita", when HH goes away to buy bananas, and leaves his nymphet alone in the cabin, we find the following lines:
"The girl I had seen on my way to town was now loaded with linen and engaged in helping a misshapen man whose big head and coarse features reminded me of the "Bertoldo" character in low Italian comedy. They were cleaning the cabins of which there was a dozen or so on Chestnut Crest, all pleasantly spaced amid the copious verdure."
Using the internet I discovered the story of an Italian jester: "Late in the 16th century appeared 'Le Sottilissime Astuzi di Bertoldo' which is one of the most remarkable books ever written about a jester. Its author, Guilio Cesare Croci, was a street musician of Bologna. He was aided in his authorial work, accord ing to this edition, by various members of the famous Accademia della Crusca. It is a brilliant comic romance giving an account of the appearance of the peasant Bertoldo, wonderful in ugliness, good sense, and wit at the court of Alboin King of the Lombards."
At the end of this reference there was a curious comment by Thomas Fuller: "When you see a jester the fool is not far off" and this might be the only thing VN wanted to call our attention to when indicating the relationship between HH and Quilty ( who "tailed" whom like a jester and the fool, who left behind mocking "cues"?).
A few weeks ago I had asked the list about the non-musical variations for the term "coda", if we can accept that its meaning can extend to the words "tail" and "queue", Quilty, "cue", "Q" and to a biography written by Miss Vivian Darkbloom ( Cf. Lolita).
I have seen "coda" mentioned by Nabokovian scholars in its more innocent acception ( Don B. Johnson, Eric Naiman). Since the the word "tail" ( and not "coda") is sexually suggestive in Portuguese, I wondered if the series of attached meanings would also apply to English and if VN could have employed them in "Lolita".
I finally discovered an indirect confirmation (of sorts), but its came from a paragraph in "Ada" where there is a play with one of the erotic senses of "queue":
"he continued to fondle the flow of her hair, and to massage and rumple her nightdress, not daring yet to go under and up, daring, however, to mold her nates until, with a little hiss, she sat down on his hand and her heels, as the burning castle of cards collapsed. She turned to him and next moment he was kissing her bare shoulder, and pushing against her like that soldier behind in the queue.
First time I hear about him. I thought old Mr Nymphobottomus had been my only predecessor.
Last spring. Trip to town. French theater matinée. Mademoiselle had mislaid the tickets. The poor fellow probably thought 'Tartuffe' was a tart or a stripteaser.
Ce qui n'est pas si bête, au fond. Which was not so dumb after all."
Jansy Mello
PS: Thanks to A. Stadlen for the correction of my mistake concerning the "through a glass, darkly", an epistle of St.Paul in the New Testament, and also for the item on T.S.Eliot's conversion - since I had assumed he had become a Catholic (indeed, his poems suggest an eclectic view of religion).
J.
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