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Vladimir Nabokov: Look at the Harlequins!

StillILearn said:
Whew. Sorry if I got a little bit excited there. Nabokov does that to me. Ninella. Okay. /Calm down, Still./
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Aww SIL,
No fun if you can't get excited reading Nabokov! :D
I think there is yet a scene ahead of you that may well knock you off your feet, or at least cause you to say a triple OMG! Some staggering around in amazement might also be a reaction. :eek:
But by all means enjoy,
:) :) :)
Peder
 
I am reduced -- a sad confession! -- to something I have also used before, and even in this book -- the well-known method of degrading one species of art by appealing to another.
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page 169

Never in his wildest did VN ever dream that we would someday (a mere thirty-odd years later!) be able to do this

and: this :D

and this: ra·ceme (r! s"mÆ, rÃ-), n. Bot.
1. a simple indeterminate inflorescence in which the flowers are borne on short pedicels lying along a common axis, as in the lily of the valley. See illus. under inflorescence.
2. a compound inflorescence in which the short pedicels with single flowers of the simple raceme are replaced by racemes.
[1775–85; < L rac"mus cluster of grapes, bunch of berries]
—ra·cemedÆ, adj.

What will the next thirty bring? :eek:
 
StillILearn said:
page 169

Never in his wildest did VN ever dream that we would someday (a mere thirty-odd years later!) be able to do this

and: this :D

and this: ra·ceme (r! s"mÆ, rÃ-), n. Bot.
1. a simple indeterminate inflorescence in which the flowers are borne on short pedicels lying along a common axis, as in the lily of the valley. See illus. under inflorescence.
2. a compound inflorescence in which the short pedicels with single flowers of the simple raceme are replaced by racemes.
[1775–85; < L rac"mus cluster of grapes, bunch of berries]
—ra·cemedÆ, adj.

What will the next thirty bring? :eek:
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SIL,
And never did VN dream that the great detective StillILearn would be on his trail! :)
What beautiful scenes and portraits! And they can be expanded up to full-size on one's screen also, where they are even more wonderful to look at. How beautiful they are to have, if those were the scenes and people that VN thought back to when he thought back to the Russia he could never have again.
An admirable find SIL,
Peder
 
Peder said:
SIL,
And never did VN dream that the great detective StillILearn would be on his trail! :)
What beautiful scenes and portraits! And they can be expanded up to full-size on one's screen also, where they are even more wonderful to look at. How beautiful they are to have, if those were the scenes and people that VN thought back to when he thought back to the Russia he could never have again.
An admirable find SIL,
Peder
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I am no Ms Marple (you still eludies me) but, as you say, I am hot on his/her trail.
 
This sentence still reads like a koan to me:

If Bel is alive today, she is thirty-two -- exactly your age at the moment of writing (February 15, 1974).
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It's -- it's what you might call ambiguous.
 
StillILearn said:
It's -- it's what you might call ambiguous.
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Ah yes, SIL,
But that is why you are getting to the really good part of the story.
And remember? "Trust Nabokov."
It will all clear up, miraculously.
Peder
 
I held in my hands a copy of a Formosan (!) paperback reproduced from the American edition of "A Kingdom by the Sea". I had not seen it yet--and preferred not to inspect the pox of misprints that, no doubt, disfigured the pirated text. On the cover a publicity picture of the child actress who had played my Virginia in the recent film did better justice to pretty Lola Sloan and her lollypop than to the significance of my novel. Although slovenly worded by a hack with no inkling of the book's art, the blurb on the back of the limp little volume rendered faithfully enough the factual plot of my Kingdom.

Bertram, an unbalanced youth, doomed to die shortly in an asylum for the criminal insane, sells for ten dollars his ten-year-old sister Ginny to the middle-aged bachelor Al Garden, a wealthy poet who travels with the beautiful child from resort to resort through America and other countries. A state of affairs that looks at first blush--and "blush" is the right word--like a case of irresponsible perversion (described in brilliant detail never attempted before) develops by the grees [misprint]into a genuine dialogue of tender love. Garden's feelings are reciprocated by Ginny, the initial "victim" who at eighteen, a normal nymph, marries him in a warmly described religious ceremony. All seems to end honky-donky[sic!] in foreverlasting bliss of a sort fit to meet the sexual demands of the most rigid, or frigid, humanitarian, had there not been running its chaotic course, in a sheef [sheaf?] of parallel lives beyond our happy couple's ken, the tragic tiny [destiny?] of Virginia Garden's inconsolable parents, Oliver and [?], whom the clever author by every means in his power, prevents from tracking their daughter Dawn [sic!!]. A Book-of-the-Decade choice.
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This is wonderful! VN the tease and jokester at his best, and perhaps a peek into what the initial concept of Lolita may have looked like when she was still just a twinkle in VN's eye..
 
StillILearn said:
This is wonderful! VN the tease and jokester at his best, and perhaps a peek into what the initial concept of Lolita may have looked like when she was still just a twinkle in VN's eye..
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ROTFL SIL
Great excerpt!
Tease and jokester . . . . and a bit of deadly serious at the same time: "...slovenly hack..." I have to believe he really enjoyed writing passages like that. :) Fun to be a successful tease and jokester. :D
Peder
 
StillILearn said:
This is wonderful! VN the tease and jokester at his best, and perhaps a peek into what the initial concept of Lolita may have looked like when she was still just a twinkle in VN's eye..
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Plus incorrect translations were one of the things that V&V had only limited control of, as in the instances it was a language neither of them spoke.....grrrrr!
 
SIL Bel was Vadim's daughter. "You" was her age. But he first met "You" on p. 225...
I say "you" retroconsciously, although in the logic of life you were not "you" yet, for we were not actually acquainted and you were to become really "you" only wen you said, catching a slip of yellow paper that was availing itself of a bluster to glide away with false insouciance:
"No, you don't."​
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Now SIL, I don't know if you've read Speak, Memory yet, but in it he refers to Vera as "You". So "you" in Harlequins! refers to Vadim's 4th wife.....the love of his life. The love that in VN's reality, he met as a youth, but Vadim only met in his older years.

Is that what you meant? :confused:
 
StillILearn said:
help me


...................
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SIL,
I hear a plaintive heart-rending cry of a damsel in distress who is impossible to resist. :)
So, it sounds like you have finished? And have maybe enjoyed the book? And you still have three questions perhaps? :)

1. How could I have been so taken in at the gate?
2. Who IS she?!
3. Does he live or die?
Or is it worse than that?
Hmm?
Peder
 
Here is a man who will tell us in one sentence what shape a rubber band forms when it is dropped to the tabletop, and who will then leave us with these words as the ending to his novel?

I'm pounding my head on my desk here. He's completely merciless, I tell you. (I wish I could say that in Russian.)

I'm guessing that Speak, Memory is up next?
 
Peder said:
SIL,
I hear a plaintive heart-rending cry of a damsel in distress who is impossible to resist. :)
So, it sounds like you have finished? And have maybe enjoyed the book? And you still have three questions perhaps? :)

1. How could I have been so taken in at the gate?
2. Who IS she?!
3. Does he live or die?
Or is it worse than that?
Hmm?
Peder
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That kinda sums it up I guess. How worse could it get?
 
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