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Re: Oriental Skrotomoff
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Budding English schoolboy comics have always punned on the Russian
ov¹=¹off¹ ending. Together with the accident that Ivor sounds like I¹ve
a,¹ we find, e.g., risible booktitles such as The Russian Eunuch by Ivor
Knackeroff. (knacker = testicle; also found in the verb: I¹m totally
knackered [exhausted]¹ The Russian Amazon by Ivor Tittoff, The genre
includes classics such as The Wild Cat¹s Revenge by Claude Balls; The Nubian
Princess by Erasmus B. Black; ...
And back to the current topic: Why d¹you call your manservant Scrotum? Cos
he¹s a Wrinkled Old RETAINER.
It¹s misleading to call these wordplays puerile ... From the mouths of babes
...
I swear to all Ye Gods that few Anglophones educated in an English primary
school would look beyond the obvious Scrotum-off pun blaring loud from VN¹s
Skrotomoff. The very off¹ spelling leads us away from real Russian and
towards a punning, castrational climax. (Usually, the Russian ending is
transliterated er er literally as -ov¹ regardless of the phonetics.)
Moving from KROTOM to KOROTOM then finding hints of KORO may well have been
in VN¹s fertile mind. Who knows? He might also have had in mind the less
devious KROT (mole, the animal; instrumental s¹KROTOM?). I can cite a
convincing connection between moles and castration: VN surely knew the
raunchy Ballad of the Manchester Molecatcher? The molecatcher catches his
wife in bed with her young lover (in flagrante delectable!)
And while the young man¹s in the midst of his frolics,
The molecatcher traps him quite fast by the bollocks [testicles]
... [lawdle-lye-day chorus omitted]
Well I¹ve been a-molecatching from morning til night,
But here¹s the biggest mole I ever caught in my life ...
I¹ll make you pay heavy for ploughing my ground [early echoes of Leadbelly¹s
Somebody¹s Digging My Potatoes)
And the money will cost you no less than ten pound ....
Why sez the young fellow, the money I don¹t mind;
It only works out about tuppence a grind!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 25/06/2011 18:31, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Alexey Sklyarenko: "Oriental Skrotomoff" may sound Russian but actually is a
> play on Korotom. Cf. Greg's words to Ada: "Percy started it - and was defeated
> in a clean match of Korotom wrestling, as used in Teristan and Sorokat - my
> father, I'm sure, could tell you all about it." ...Korotom seems to hint at
> koro, "a culture specific syndrom, occuring chiefly in China and southeastern
> Asia, characterized by anxiety and fear of retraction of the penis or breasts
> and labia into the body." King Wing (Demon's wrestling master) must have
> taught Van a couple of grips
>
> JM: Let's return to the line you quoted and to one that precedes it: "Van, his
> crab claws on the ready, contemplated him, hoping for a pretext to inflict a
> certain special device of exotic torture that he had not yet had the
> opportunity to use in a real fight [...]
> "Your cousin has treated Greg and your humble servant to a most bracing
> exhibition of Oriental Skrotomoff or whatever the name may be.¹."
>
> Nabokov must have had Freud's male "penis envy" in mind when he described
> Percy's "ugly machine" ( "In all his life, said stolid Greg to Van, he had
> never seen such an ugly engine, surgically circumcised, terrifically oversized
> and high-colored, with such a phenomenal c¦ur de b¦uf; nor had either of the
> fascinated, fastidious boys ever witnessed the like of its sustained, strongly
> arched, practically everlasting stream."),a scene that came immediately before
> the scuffle started.
> When I suddenly doubted that Skrotomoff was a Russian word I had no inkling of
> its being a hint to "koro" (safely orientalized!), but I envisaged the word in
> English ("Skrotom") with its ending in "off"... It looked a puerile pun
> (right in the mood of the boy's fight) but, if "koro" was really in Nab's
> mind, then its condensation is very cleverly achieved.
>
> btw: it's not the first time that Nabokov mentions a "coeur de boeuf," is it?
> ( in Pale Fire?)
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ov¹=¹off¹ ending. Together with the accident that Ivor sounds like I¹ve
a,¹ we find, e.g., risible booktitles such as The Russian Eunuch by Ivor
Knackeroff. (knacker = testicle; also found in the verb: I¹m totally
knackered [exhausted]¹ The Russian Amazon by Ivor Tittoff, The genre
includes classics such as The Wild Cat¹s Revenge by Claude Balls; The Nubian
Princess by Erasmus B. Black; ...
And back to the current topic: Why d¹you call your manservant Scrotum? Cos
he¹s a Wrinkled Old RETAINER.
It¹s misleading to call these wordplays puerile ... From the mouths of babes
...
I swear to all Ye Gods that few Anglophones educated in an English primary
school would look beyond the obvious Scrotum-off pun blaring loud from VN¹s
Skrotomoff. The very off¹ spelling leads us away from real Russian and
towards a punning, castrational climax. (Usually, the Russian ending is
transliterated er er literally as -ov¹ regardless of the phonetics.)
Moving from KROTOM to KOROTOM then finding hints of KORO may well have been
in VN¹s fertile mind. Who knows? He might also have had in mind the less
devious KROT (mole, the animal; instrumental s¹KROTOM?). I can cite a
convincing connection between moles and castration: VN surely knew the
raunchy Ballad of the Manchester Molecatcher? The molecatcher catches his
wife in bed with her young lover (in flagrante delectable!)
And while the young man¹s in the midst of his frolics,
The molecatcher traps him quite fast by the bollocks [testicles]
... [lawdle-lye-day chorus omitted]
Well I¹ve been a-molecatching from morning til night,
But here¹s the biggest mole I ever caught in my life ...
I¹ll make you pay heavy for ploughing my ground [early echoes of Leadbelly¹s
Somebody¹s Digging My Potatoes)
And the money will cost you no less than ten pound ....
Why sez the young fellow, the money I don¹t mind;
It only works out about tuppence a grind!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 25/06/2011 18:31, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Alexey Sklyarenko: "Oriental Skrotomoff" may sound Russian but actually is a
> play on Korotom. Cf. Greg's words to Ada: "Percy started it - and was defeated
> in a clean match of Korotom wrestling, as used in Teristan and Sorokat - my
> father, I'm sure, could tell you all about it." ...Korotom seems to hint at
> koro, "a culture specific syndrom, occuring chiefly in China and southeastern
> Asia, characterized by anxiety and fear of retraction of the penis or breasts
> and labia into the body." King Wing (Demon's wrestling master) must have
> taught Van a couple of grips
>
> JM: Let's return to the line you quoted and to one that precedes it: "Van, his
> crab claws on the ready, contemplated him, hoping for a pretext to inflict a
> certain special device of exotic torture that he had not yet had the
> opportunity to use in a real fight [...]
> "Your cousin has treated Greg and your humble servant to a most bracing
> exhibition of Oriental Skrotomoff or whatever the name may be.¹."
>
> Nabokov must have had Freud's male "penis envy" in mind when he described
> Percy's "ugly machine" ( "In all his life, said stolid Greg to Van, he had
> never seen such an ugly engine, surgically circumcised, terrifically oversized
> and high-colored, with such a phenomenal c¦ur de b¦uf; nor had either of the
> fascinated, fastidious boys ever witnessed the like of its sustained, strongly
> arched, practically everlasting stream."),a scene that came immediately before
> the scuffle started.
> When I suddenly doubted that Skrotomoff was a Russian word I had no inkling of
> its being a hint to "koro" (safely orientalized!), but I envisaged the word in
> English ("Skrotom") with its ending in "off"... It looked a puerile pun
> (right in the mood of the boy's fight) but, if "koro" was really in Nab's
> mind, then its condensation is very cleverly achieved.
>
> btw: it's not the first time that Nabokov mentions a "coeur de boeuf," is it?
> ( in Pale Fire?)
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/