Subject
THOUGHTS: Nates and ensellure
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Lolita: "...This is how Rita enters the picture.//She was twice Lolita's age... with charmingly asymmetrical eyes, and angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a most appealing ensellure to her supple back — I think she had some Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up...between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tigermoth..."
JM: A question related to Toylestown.
My bibliography about "Lolita" is very restricted and, following Alfred Appel Jr. ( AL notes to p.258), I read that "The invented Toylestown is a pun commemorating his "London" ( 1794) - toil's town. ".
And yet, Appel locates an echo of T.S.Eliot's "Gerontion" (for "depraved May") lying in the vicinity and my first impression had been that "Toylestown" could have been an early, not very successful, wordplay with Toilest (TSEliot).
Blake's "Tyger" came to my mind easily, but I needed a search-machine to find a "tiger-moth". However, only by joining Blake and Toylest and cutting off a couple of letters would I reach John Keats, with "The Eve of Saint Agnes" flickering "tiger moth" image, linked to stained-glass windows. (lines 211/213,XXIV: "And diamonded with panes of quaint device,/ Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,/ As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;"
(I understand that tiger-moths, like dragon-flies, have inspired the names of airplanes (Dumont's Demoiselle) and gliders (tiger moth). In ADA there are references to "libellula wings" related to planes, not only to SD's Demoiselle.)
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JM: A question related to Toylestown.
My bibliography about "Lolita" is very restricted and, following Alfred Appel Jr. ( AL notes to p.258), I read that "The invented Toylestown is a pun commemorating his "London" ( 1794) - toil's town. ".
And yet, Appel locates an echo of T.S.Eliot's "Gerontion" (for "depraved May") lying in the vicinity and my first impression had been that "Toylestown" could have been an early, not very successful, wordplay with Toilest (TSEliot).
Blake's "Tyger" came to my mind easily, but I needed a search-machine to find a "tiger-moth". However, only by joining Blake and Toylest and cutting off a couple of letters would I reach John Keats, with "The Eve of Saint Agnes" flickering "tiger moth" image, linked to stained-glass windows. (lines 211/213,XXIV: "And diamonded with panes of quaint device,/ Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,/ As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;"
(I understand that tiger-moths, like dragon-flies, have inspired the names of airplanes (Dumont's Demoiselle) and gliders (tiger moth). In ADA there are references to "libellula wings" related to planes, not only to SD's Demoiselle.)
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/