I wonder if Humbert is making some kind of multi-lingual pun or willful mistranslation of Virgil's Nescio quis teneros oculus  mihi fascinat agnos. ("I wonder what fearsome eye has v(h)exed my lambs.")

Sam Gwynn



-----Original Message-----
From: Mo Ibrahim <mibraheem@GMAIL.COM>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Tue, Aug 29, 2017 5:43 am
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Fascinum in LOLITA?

H.H. describes some pictures:

"Here is Virgil who could the nymphet sing in single tone […] Here are two of King Akhnaten’s and Queen Nefertiti’s pre-nubile Nile daughters (that royal couple had a litter of six), wearing nothing but many necklaces of bright beads, relaxed on cushions, intact after three thousand years, with their soft brown puppybodies, cropped hair and long ebony eyes. Here are some brides of ten compelled to seat themselves on the fascinum, the virile ivory in the temples of classical scholarship." (19)

The Virgil reference could be to two stanzas in ECLOGUES that reads: “Who could the Nymphets sing? Who strew the ground \ With blooming plants, or mantle o'er the springs”.

The "Nile daughters" is a reference to a wall painting of Neferneferure and Neferneferuaten - two daughters of King Akhnaten and Queen Nefertiti.

However, Appel didn't note a reference to ten-year-old brides straddling ivory dildos. And I can't seem to locate one. Maybe, this isn't an allusion. Any ideas?

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