Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005351, Wed, 12 Jul 2000 06:35:29 -0700

Subject
What was Gordon wearing? (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Arthur Glass <goliard@worldnet.att.net>

A Bacchic note in the Libitina episode? Interesting! The Romans identified
the Greek Bacchus with the local Italian agricultural deity Liber. Also
Libera is a Latin name for Proserpina, the Queen of the Underworld and is
also identified with Ariadne, who is implicated in the Bacchus cycle. Did a
sense of that liguistic root ifluence VN in naming Lavender's villa? how
about an echo of 'libido?' If, as Brian Boyd believes, 'Disa' is a female
version of Dis, the Underworld theme continues into the next episode, at
Villa Paradisa.

The connection of sexuality and the 'underworld' is made earlier in the
account of Charles and Oleg's first trip down the secret passageway

What would VN make of all this myth criticism?





----- Original Message -----
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 1:51 PM
Subject: Re: What was Gordon wearing? (fwd)


> From: ken tapscott <kentapscott@hotmail.com>
>
> Perhaps this has already been mentioned re Gordon's get-up, and I may
> have missed it in an earlier posting, but in addition to being dressed
like
> Nijinsky in his most famous role, Gordon is also attired in the classical
> attributes of Bacchus, god of wine, inebriation, and uncontrolled
> sensuality, as was Nijinsky's (Debussy's, Mallarme's) Faun - leopard skin
> and ivy. Isn't Gradus posing as a wine merchant at least part of the time
in
> Pale Fire? Humbert's uncle Gustave Trapp, whom he fears as a spectral
> nemesis, was a wine merchant. And one of the characters in the story about
> Adam Falter (isn't it Falter (= "butterfly" in German?) himself?), the man
> who accidentally tears the fabric of reality while on a business trip in
the
> South of France, is a wine merchant as well. And wasn't that story, whose
> title escapes me now, one of the two chapters from the Ur-version of Pale
> Fire, which N saved and published separately as short stories? The other
one
> is called "Solus Rex", I think (don't have the book of stories with me at
> the moment).
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
>