Subject
[NABOKOV-L] Hazel and Vair eyes (quotes)
Date
Body
As promised, the references to "vair eyes":
LOLITA: Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet."
..............................................
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
.............................................
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
PNIN:
Margaret Thayer...said that she imagined Cinderella's glass shoes to be exactly of that greenish blue tint; whereupon Professor Pain remarked that...Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of Russian squirrel fur - vair, in French. It was, he said, an obvious case of the survival of the fittest among words, verre being more evocative than vair which, he submitted, came not from varius, variegated, but from veveritsa, Slavic for a certain beautiful, pale, winter-squirrel fur, having a bluish, or better say sizïy, columbine, shade - 'from columba, Latin for "pigeon ", as somebody here well knows - so you see, Mrs Fire, you were, in general, correct.'...('I always thought "columbine" was some sort of flower,' said Thomas to Betty, who lightly acquiesced.)
SHORT-STORIES: The Thunderstom: "The courtyard was empty, except for the old, shaggy dog with its graying muzzle that had thrust its head out of the kennel and was looking up, like a person, with frightened hazel eyes. I looked up too. Elijah had scrambled onto the roof, the iron hoop glimmering behind his back."*
*shaggy dogs are recurrent themes, present in Nursery tale, Lolita, Pale Fire... even in TOoL ( a black bag) ... They apply mainly to Skye-terriers with weeping-willow ears; Cinderella and Cendrillon are also recurrent themes, as are "squuirrel" and "columbine", cf. Ada, RLSK, aso.
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LOLITA: Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet."
..............................................
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
.............................................
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
PNIN:
Margaret Thayer...said that she imagined Cinderella's glass shoes to be exactly of that greenish blue tint; whereupon Professor Pain remarked that...Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of Russian squirrel fur - vair, in French. It was, he said, an obvious case of the survival of the fittest among words, verre being more evocative than vair which, he submitted, came not from varius, variegated, but from veveritsa, Slavic for a certain beautiful, pale, winter-squirrel fur, having a bluish, or better say sizïy, columbine, shade - 'from columba, Latin for "pigeon ", as somebody here well knows - so you see, Mrs Fire, you were, in general, correct.'...('I always thought "columbine" was some sort of flower,' said Thomas to Betty, who lightly acquiesced.)
SHORT-STORIES: The Thunderstom: "The courtyard was empty, except for the old, shaggy dog with its graying muzzle that had thrust its head out of the kennel and was looking up, like a person, with frightened hazel eyes. I looked up too. Elijah had scrambled onto the roof, the iron hoop glimmering behind his back."*
*shaggy dogs are recurrent themes, present in Nursery tale, Lolita, Pale Fire... even in TOoL ( a black bag) ... They apply mainly to Skye-terriers with weeping-willow ears; Cinderella and Cendrillon are also recurrent themes, as are "squuirrel" and "columbine", cf. Ada, RLSK, aso.
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/