Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005537, Mon, 16 Oct 2000 11:43:12 -0700

Subject
QUERY: Grillo & Obieto
Date
Body
ADA's menage-a-trois scene is written in the style of several Renassance
painters -- most of whom are identified by the author. But WHO are Grillo
and Obieto? And that "ferreting artist"? And where does that shop suddenly
appear from? ANy ideas? Anagrams?
More generally, has anyone found possible prototypes for the scene in II-8?

"That about summed it up (for the magical gewgaw liquefied all at once, and'
Lucette, snatching up her nightdress, escaped to her room). It was only the
sort of shop where the jeweler's fingertips have a tender way of enhancing
the preciousness of a trinket by something akin to a rubbing of hindwings on
the part of a settled lycaenid or to the frottage of a conjurer's thumb
dissolving a coin; but just in such a shop the anonymous picture attributed
to Grillo or Obieto, caprice or purpose, ober- or unterart, is found by the
ferreting artist."
(ADA II-8)