Irrelevant but I had to look up otiose (and I love it, I must use it, and often). I remember first beginning with Nabokov and I needed a dictionary to hand for at least ten words on every page, but it's getting easier, unless
Lolita is the most thick with grandiose vocabulary? Aside from
Ada of course. Also had to do a little research on Keats'
La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which I learn is about death and illness? Hmmm...
But anyway... is it just me or does V seem rather bitter about Sebastian being in England? Jealous? The way he says that Sebastian spent three years there and
"visited us only twice - better say once, for the last time was for my mother's funeral". And
"Sebastian, for all his moodiness..." (both Chapter 3). And then in Chapter 5...
"Sebastian's sense of inferiority was based on his trying to out-England England, and never succeeeding..."
The clothing then (yes,
Pontalba, I know what you mean about the "aura" lol)...
"clad in a brown dressing gown and old pumps". That's kind of what Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) students are rumoured to dress like, even now. It's not true, of course, but if such a student were to crop up in conversation, that's the immediate image... brown corduroys, brown woolly jumpers, brown scarves, etc. Maybe Nabokov just extended that "brown" idea into a dressing gown too, or maybe back then they really did wear brown clothes. I live only an hour from Cambridge and have never seen anyone dressed that way... The "pushbikes" is very true. Oxford and Cambridge (and many other "University cities" here) are packed with them, and it's quite scary, I'd imagine, for drivers with so many on the roads.
Peder quoting SK said:
When Sebastian visited us in Paris at the close of his first university year, I was struck by his foreign appearance. He wore a canary yellow jumper under his tweed coat. His flannel trousers were baggy, and his thick socks sagged, innocent of suspenders. The stripes of his tie were loud and for some odd reason he carried his handkerchief in his sleeve. He smoked his pipe in the street, knocking it out against his heel.
The apparel is exagerated somewhat, but yes, that's what students from Cambridge university typically are perceived as wearing. I dunno, maybe without the tie. Maybe the tie was a formal thing, or a fashion statement. Or something.
Is there any significance that Sebastian
Knight (and indeed, all the Knights in the family) and Clare
Bishop are both chess pieces? Maybe not, but wasn't Nabokov a chess fan? Have I invented that? Hmmm. Clare Bishop has only briefly been mentioned up to now, does she play a bigger role in the story later on? Also, the butterfly on the front of Sebastian's notebook? Butterfly, Nabokov, butterflies, etc.
The linguist at Cambridge seems interesting. I'm only halfway through Chapter six at the moment but the Russian / Bulgarian stuff was quite funny. Sebastian seems quite irritable, unless that is merely V's portrayal of him? And do the names of Sebastian's stories have any relevance? They are unusual.
