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Re: Erotic Architecture in "The New Epicurean" and "Ada"
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Abdel Bouazza: "Alexey's recent postings on Ada's Villa Venus reminded me of ...The New Epicurean listed in Pisanus Fraxi's Index Librorum Prohibitoru (London 1877-1885)..."the extracts cited are very interesting when compared to Eric Veen's Villa Venus."...
Jansy Mello: Walled-in gardens figured prominently in the lavish descriptions of Sir Charles's mansion. My undisciplined associations led me to Sebastian's visits to a movie to watch a film called "The Enchanted Garden" (there seems to be no relation to Ben Sirine's translation of "The Perfumed Garden"):and then to "ADA".(what a pity that Humbert Humbert didn't film Lolita playing tennis, although she might have appeared in a production by Quilty...)
RLSK: "He went to concerts and plays, and drank hot milk in the middle of the night at coffee stalls with taxi drivers. He is said to have been three times to see the same film - a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame Lecerf really was, I discovered that film in a French cinema where I sat through the performance, with the sole intent of learning why it had attracted him so. Somewhere in the middle the story shifted to the Riviera, and there was a glimpse of bathers basking in the sun. Was Nina among them? Was it her naked shoulder? I thought that one girl who glanced back at the camera looked rather like her, but sun-oil and sun tan, and an eye-shade are much too good at disguising a passing face."
Now my paths forked and it was Ada, in another film, who proved as fascinating an actress as Nina Rechnoy has been in her lover's eyes, many many years later
For me, the Ardis part of VN's novel still dominates my vision of the entire book whereas the fantasies that animate the "floramors" fiction are almost left aside...
ADA: "The main picture had now started. The three leading parts - cadaverous Don Juan, paunchy Leporello on his donkey, and not too irresistible, obviously forty-year-old Donna Anna - were played by solid stars... the picture turned out to be quite good./On the way to the remote castle where the difficult lady, widowed by his sword, has finally promised him a long night of love in her chaste and chilly chamber, the aging libertine nurses his potency by spurning the advances of a succession of robust belles. A gitana predicts to the gloomy cavalier that before reaching the castle he will have succumbed to the wiles of her sister, Dolores, a dancing girl (lifted from Osberg's novella, as was to be proved in the ensuing lawsuit). She also predicted something to Van, for even before Dolores came out of the circus tent to water Juan's horse, Van knew who she would be./ In the magic rays of the camera, in the controlled delirium of ballerina grace, ten years of her life had glanced off and she was again that slip of a girl qui n'en porte pas (as he had jested once to annoy her governess by a fictitious Frenchman's mistranslation): a remembered triviality that intruded upon the chill of his present emotion with the jarring stupidity of an innocent stranger's asking an absorbed voyeur for directions in a labyrinth of mean lanes./Lucette recognized Ada three or four seconds later...She was absolutely perfect, and strange, and poignantly familiar. By some stroke of art, by some enchantment of chance, the few brief scenes she was given formed a perfect compendium of her 1884 and 1888 and 1892 looks...Her neck shows white through her long black hair separated by the motion of her shoulder. It is no longer another man's Dolores, but a little girl twisting an aquarelle brush in the paint of Van's blood, and Donna Anna's castle is now a bog flower."
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Jansy Mello: Walled-in gardens figured prominently in the lavish descriptions of Sir Charles's mansion. My undisciplined associations led me to Sebastian's visits to a movie to watch a film called "The Enchanted Garden" (there seems to be no relation to Ben Sirine's translation of "The Perfumed Garden"):and then to "ADA".(what a pity that Humbert Humbert didn't film Lolita playing tennis, although she might have appeared in a production by Quilty...)
RLSK: "He went to concerts and plays, and drank hot milk in the middle of the night at coffee stalls with taxi drivers. He is said to have been three times to see the same film - a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame Lecerf really was, I discovered that film in a French cinema where I sat through the performance, with the sole intent of learning why it had attracted him so. Somewhere in the middle the story shifted to the Riviera, and there was a glimpse of bathers basking in the sun. Was Nina among them? Was it her naked shoulder? I thought that one girl who glanced back at the camera looked rather like her, but sun-oil and sun tan, and an eye-shade are much too good at disguising a passing face."
Now my paths forked and it was Ada, in another film, who proved as fascinating an actress as Nina Rechnoy has been in her lover's eyes, many many years later
For me, the Ardis part of VN's novel still dominates my vision of the entire book whereas the fantasies that animate the "floramors" fiction are almost left aside...
ADA: "The main picture had now started. The three leading parts - cadaverous Don Juan, paunchy Leporello on his donkey, and not too irresistible, obviously forty-year-old Donna Anna - were played by solid stars... the picture turned out to be quite good./On the way to the remote castle where the difficult lady, widowed by his sword, has finally promised him a long night of love in her chaste and chilly chamber, the aging libertine nurses his potency by spurning the advances of a succession of robust belles. A gitana predicts to the gloomy cavalier that before reaching the castle he will have succumbed to the wiles of her sister, Dolores, a dancing girl (lifted from Osberg's novella, as was to be proved in the ensuing lawsuit). She also predicted something to Van, for even before Dolores came out of the circus tent to water Juan's horse, Van knew who she would be./ In the magic rays of the camera, in the controlled delirium of ballerina grace, ten years of her life had glanced off and she was again that slip of a girl qui n'en porte pas (as he had jested once to annoy her governess by a fictitious Frenchman's mistranslation): a remembered triviality that intruded upon the chill of his present emotion with the jarring stupidity of an innocent stranger's asking an absorbed voyeur for directions in a labyrinth of mean lanes./Lucette recognized Ada three or four seconds later...She was absolutely perfect, and strange, and poignantly familiar. By some stroke of art, by some enchantment of chance, the few brief scenes she was given formed a perfect compendium of her 1884 and 1888 and 1892 looks...Her neck shows white through her long black hair separated by the motion of her shoulder. It is no longer another man's Dolores, but a little girl twisting an aquarelle brush in the paint of Van's blood, and Donna Anna's castle is now a bog flower."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/