-------- Original Message --------
----- Original Message -----
From: "jansymello" <jansy@aetern.us>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] bloody
> Alexey,
>
> After having handed on the explorations of historical events and Russian
> poetry to your efficient care, I'll return again to topics which were
> mentioned by you only in passing. After you cited Father Sergius's chopped
> finger, now I want to reach the terrible nurse "Joan".
>
> It seems that VN was fascinated by the French Catholic martyr, Saint Joan.
> He wrote, somewhere, that one of the first names for "Lolita" was to have
> been "Juanita" ( a "Juanita Dark": Jeanne D' Arc). We alo know that Lolita
> shares with Lucette a redish "Boticcellian" hair color. Why do you think
> the "terrible" points to "Ivan", not to something about St.Joan?
>
> While still onto "bloomers", I decided to read Rimbaud's poem mentioned in
> that chapter ( Ada I, chapter 10) and came across Rimbaud's reference to
> an "oriflamme", which I remember as a word applied to Lucette.
>
> I found an old posting from SZ ( Sept. 23, 2003) and I'll quote it only in
> part:
> " I just noticed that the association of Lucette with oriflammes also
> takes us back to the imagery of Rimbaud's poem, 'Memoire' which is the
> context for the discussion of marsh marigolds: "la soie, en foule et de
> lys pur, des oriflammes
> sous les murs dont quelque pucelle eut la défense"...
> The link with Lucette was also quoted: " 'Ménagez vos américanismes,' said
> the latter - and then opened his arms wide in paternal welcome as
> guileless Lucette trotted into the room with a child' s pink, stiff-bagged
> butterfly net in her little fist, like an oriflamme."
> Next, we had an EDCOMMENT.
> Wrote DBJ: "Quite right. I would add that "oriflamme" is etymologically
> "auri" (golden) + "flame". The red silk banner is split at the outer edge
> resembling flames flickering in the breeze as the troops ride horse-back.
> The colors are those associated with "pour Elle" throughout ADA. Rimbaud's
> "pucelle," I assume, is Joan of Arc (...) Lucette is, like Joan, a grade-A
> martyr."
>
> After these retrievals I have something new ( I hope) to add. Ada's
> Chapter 10 is rather short and I noticed, with surprise, how rich with
> allusions it was, both reaching into former chapters and into the future.
> B. Boyd's annotations show how we may glimpse in it Lucette's "death by
> water" ( in addition to the scene of Lucette's bath, when Van gives her a
> specially bound book of verse that she keeps with her until the end, we
> have the rubber-doll episode, taken up in retrospect when Lucette is
> drowning and its relation to the theme of Ophelia).
> Her role as a "martyr" with an "oriflamme" hair or net, and the
> connection pucelle/pour elle, is also made.
>
> What strikes me as novelty is the echo of Rimbaud throughout the entire
> chapter. I haven't yet read Wallace Folie's translation, but I'll borrow
> from others ( following C.John Holcombe, on-line LitLangs) when necessary
> to convey the links.
> 1.
> (a) In Rimbaud's poem we find: "Madame se tient trop debout danls la
> prairie prochaine...tropi fière pour elle; des enfants lisant dans la
> verdure fleurie leur livre de maroquin rouge!".
> (b) "Too upright is Madam in the meadow's splendoured glass...too proud to
> watch her children reading in the flowered grass. Their books in red
> morocco(... Of what they think or dream...she cannot follow)"
> (c) In "Ada" we encounter Marina, upright, observing:"You know,
> children...when I was your age, Ada, and my brother was your age, Van, we
> talked about croquet, and ponies, and puppies, and the last
> 'fête-d'enfants", and the next picnic, and - oh, millions of nice normal
> things, but never of old French botanists and God knows what!' "...
>
> 2.
> (a)Rimbaud's poem begins with " L' eau claire; comme le sel des larmes
> d'enfance" ( "clear water, like the salt of childhood tears")
> (b) soon, among childhood reminiscences ( Marina's in that moment) we find
> that she is crying.
> "Ada": "Marina often mentioned Ivan who had been a famous violinist at
> eighteen, but whithout any special show of emotion, so that Ada now noted
> with surprise that her mother's heavy make-up had started to thaw under a
> sudden flood of tears" ...
> (c) This scene connects both the discoveries in the attic and suggests a
> similarly complex relationship bt. Marina and Ivan as the one bt. Van and
> Ada ?
>
> 3.
> (a)Lucette is indirectly mentioned in Van's direct quote from Rimbaud: "
> Les robes vertes et déteintes des fillettes" ( and frocks of girls,
> loosely faded, as green as mould")
> (b) Ada's comment: "...'Lucette, our darling copperhead who by now should
> be in her greeen nightgown -' "
>
> 4.
> (a) Later, from the verse "Elle, toute froide et noire, court! après le
> départ de l'homme!" the commentator aks "why black, if not simply to make
> the neat phrase 'froire et noire'?... Unless Rimbaud is making an allusion
> to slavery in the US cotton fields, which is possible..." Black arms are
> also present in "... meut ses bras, noirs, et lourds et frais surtout..."
> ("with arms heavy, black, above all, coolness")
> (b) Ada's chapter 10 ends: "and who had learned, all by himself, to
> release the adoration as soon as the kerosene lamp had left the mobile
> bedroom in his black nurse's fist" ( a black slave?)
>
> NB: The Bloom/transmongrelizing theme begins in the first paragraph, with
> a mention to "Paul Bourget's 'monologue intérieur' borrowed from old Leo"
> ( also James Joyce's description of Molly Bloom?) and a "ludicrous
> blunder" 'a muzhik's sheepskin coat, bare side out, bloom side in,' as
> defined in a dictionary..." ( stream of consciousness, blunder, bloom
> side ), passes through "flowers into bloomers" and "really gorgeous
> bloomers, as you call them, Van" to the list of nick-names
> (mollyblob,marybud,maybubble...) . A "forged louis d'or" is also a
> bloomer...
> Is there anything we have to "translate" differently in the entire
> chapter?
> If Rimbaud's lines make their presence felt all over, perhaps it might
> offer a hint about a hidden destiny in the stories of Van, Ada and
> Lucette? In the poem, the boy runs away and there is a passage from
> saintly beds in April nights to rotting August evenings.
> There is also a mention of "arms too short, not this flower or that, which
> is yellow, however sought, or the blue one, friends, in waters grey as
> cinders"... before the verses end "what mud!"
> ( "oh! bras trop courts! ni l'une ni l'autre fleur; ni la jaune qui
> m'importune lá, ni la bleue, amis, à l'eau couleur de centre" .... "à
> quelle boue?" )
>
> I don't mind being responsible for another mistake similar to "Elsie de
> Nord's rave", but I thought this might be worth to consider ( and if it
> has been discussed before, I'm sorry for my inaptitude and I hope to be
> corrected )
>
> Jansy
>
>