Dear Jansy and the List,
 
"the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast...)"
 
Here is the connection between "Baldy," "Peter de Rast," "scratching" and Pushkin's fatal duel.
 
"Baldy" as the name of an oak clearly alludes to Pushkin: the name of his family estate where he spent his two most fertile autumns (in 1830 and 1833) was Boldino, and one of his most famous lines (the opening line of his first long poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila") is U lukomor'ia dub zelionyi ("There is a green oak at the sea shore"). There is in ADA only one brief glimpse of Pushkin, in a chapter that deals with Ada's fits of scratching (1.17): 
 
"'Sladko! (Sweet!)' Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species [of mosquitoes] in Yukon."
 
Now, Pushkin was fatally wounded in his duel with d'Anthes who was the adopted son and a lover of the Dutch ambassador in St. Petersburg, Baron de Heeckeren, the inveterate pederast (he never had a romance with a woman). If I remember correctly, the Baron was a lover of paintings and had a fairly good collection at his house in Vienna (where he served after he had been expelled from St. Petersburg). 
 
Note that Pushkin's exclamation ("Sladko!") is prompted by a tactile sensation caused by a mosquito bite, while normally of course we would exclaim it after feasting on something sweet, say, berries (for instance, Mandelstam's raspberries. The motif of blood and that of berries are inseparably connected in Ada.
 
Interestingly, the names of two Soviet secret police heads were Yagoda (the name is stressed on the second syllable, but, when stressed on the first syllable, it is Russian for "berry) and Beria (which is rather close to the English "berry"). It is worth noting that VN played on the name of the third head of NKVD (secret police), Ezhov (which comes from iozh, "a hedgehog"), in his play Sobytie ("The Event"). It is diffucult to decide who of the three men was the cruelest (perhaps, it was Beria), and it is small comfort to know that all three were eventually executed.
 
I very much would like to know if Nabokov knew the name of Stalin's secretary and "aid-de-camp," Poskriobyshev. I need it for the note I currently work on, "Grattez le Tartare..." or Nabokov's Revenge upon Napoleon." I will appreciate all information about it.
 
best,
Alexey    
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Donald B. Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 4:13 PM
Subject: Fwd: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"


EDNOTE. Whatever else VN may have had in mind, "Peter de Rast"
 is certainly a play on "pederast". I seem to recall a "bare-shouldered" lad
that King Kinbote encounters on his escape from Nova Zembla,
---------------------------

----- Forwarded message from pstock@brandeis.edu -----
    Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:04:06 -0400
    From: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
Reply-To: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
 Subject: RE: Re:  Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"
      To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
I don't know about real-life Peters de Rast.  And I hope that I haven't
somehow missed what follows in a previous post.  But given the passage's
mixing of sex and childhood, doesn't Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast, for
democratic Netherlanders) suggest "pederast"?  This would link to the lad's
bare shoulder.  This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we
recall the marked emphasis in HH's pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided
childhood--as opposed to the more commonplace interpretations of this crime,
which arguably are concerned more with tarring and feathering the pederast
than with comprehending the effect on the victim.  Meanwhile, Lucette looks
on . . . .

Humbly submitted,

David Powelstock



  _____

From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf
Of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"



Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,

Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can be. I
saw Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the   "hunted
enchanters" inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was not
in his screen-play.

Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a reference to
a Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov
himself, who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but still
strong old oak".
Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast...)

In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum "rake"
from "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing. Google
took me to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes. In
it there was Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn,  een
toonladder (makam) in de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.

I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the Curds, to
the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".

I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the reference
is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what of
the four cows and the lad in rags?

"as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder
bare"

Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called Peter de
Rast?   The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is
produced by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.

Jansy



  _____

I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In
Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the hotel is
called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey but (as
far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose idea
it was?

Anthony Stadlen

----- End forwarded message -----

I don’t know about real-life Peters de Rast.  And I hope that I haven’t somehow missed what follows in a previous post.  But given the passage’s mixing of sex and childhood, doesn’t Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast, for democratic Netherlanders) suggest “pederast”?  This would link to the lad’s bare shoulder.  This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we recall the marked emphasis in HH’s pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided childhood--as opposed to the more commonplace interpretations of this crime, which arguably are concerned more with tarring and feathering the pederast than with comprehending the effect on the victim.  Meanwhile, Lucette looks on . . . .

Humbly submitted,

David Powelstock

 

From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about "Rast"

 

Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,

Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can be. I saw Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the   "hunted enchanters" inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was not in his screen-play. 

Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a reference to a Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov himself, who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but still strong old oak".
Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast...)

In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum "rake" from "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing. Google took me to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes. In it there was Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn,  een toonladder (makam) in de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.

I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the Curds, to the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".

I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the reference is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what of the four cows and the lad in rags?

"as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare"

Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called Peter de Rast?   The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is produced by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.

Jansy

 

I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the hotel is called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey but (as far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose idea it was?

Anthony Stadlen