Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] [TOUGHT] TOoL: Asparagus,
aspirins and Proust - synesthesia through mnemonic feats
aspirins and Proust - synesthesia through mnemonic feats
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Date
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Jansy/Fran: a naughty Scouse (Liverpool dialect) saying: Dem asparagus tips
was so thick, they fair made ar [our] Maggie blush to suck em.
Probably irrelevant, but when I first saw ³stang,² my reaction was: possibly
archaic, dialect, or mistaken past tense of ³sting.²
Confusion over English (via Anglo-Saxon) weak and strong verbs is pervasive
in dialects and even among educated speakers of ³standard² English. Pinker
has documented the errors made by children in mastering what is undoubtedly
an illogical mess of verb forms: sing/sang/sung; dive/dived/dove;
hang/hanged/hung. Hence, from \sting\, the emergence of a choice between
standard \stung\ and non-standard \stinged\ or \stang\.
SK-B
On 14/01/2010 16:46, "frances assa" <franassa@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Sorry, Jansy. But obviously phallic. Fran Assa
>
> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:25:42 -0200
> From: jansy@AETERN.US
> Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [TOUGHT] TOoL: Asparagus, aspirins and Proust
> - synesthesia through mnemonic feats
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>
> In TOoL there is a quick reference to "asparagus" when Flora's mother has to
> go out herself to get "aspirins" because the maid had bought asparagus in
> their stead. As a wordplay, it is not very apt or funny. But I remembered
> other references to "asparagus" and decided to explore this choice of
> vegetable or sound: the spinning soup in Transparent Things and a description
> of Proust's novel in PF.
>
> Nabokov, in TOoL, twice mocked Proust's "involuntary memory" through its first
> report of a madeleine immersed in an infusion of linden (tilleuil)leaves. In
> his essay about Proust, Samuel Beckett counted six such experiences and wrote
> extensively about Proust's theories. Nabokov, so it seems to me, insists that
> such magical recollections may happen at will, not merely by a chance
> combination of ingredients.
> The link of asparagus and Proust, though, is most intriguing (I only
> recollect, together with the madeleine, a spoon with a crinkling napkin and a
> vague distant glassy noise as the other triggering elements of a synesthetic
> memory in Proust).
>
> Here they are:
> PF (Kinbote,note to line 181)"Speaking of novels,'I said,'you remember we
> decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust¹s rough masterpiece was a
> huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any
> possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a
> colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no
> more...mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness
> repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting
> avenues...light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English
> poets, a flora of metaphors, described by Cocteau, I think as a mirage of
> suspended gardens¹..."
> ADA: (Marina) "contented herself with...what she remembered... as being his
> favorite food zelyonïya shchi... After that...there would be bread-crumbed
> sander (sudak) with boiled potatoes, hazel-hen (ryabchiki) and that special
> asparagus (bezukhanka) which does not produce Proust¹s After-effect, as
> cookbooks say."
> Transparent Things: "...trying to induce a dream ...On the printed page the
> words "likely" and "actually" should be italicized too, at least slightly, to
> indicate a slight breath of wind inclining those characters (in the sense of
> both signs and personae)...Human life can be compared to a person dancing in a
> variety of forms around his own self: thus the vegetables ...encircled a boy
> in his dream - green cucumber, blue eggplant, red beet, Potato pere, Potato
> fils, a girly asparagus, and, oh, many more, their spinning ronde going faster
> and faster and gradually forming a transparent ring of banded colors around a
> dead person or planet...One should bear in mind, however, that there is no
> mirage without a vanishing point, just as there is no lake without a closed
> circle of reliable land."
> From Nabokov's childhood fevers and dellirium (aspirins?) we reach a Proustian
> asparagus ( fairy-tales and dreams?) with an invasion of chaotic spinning
> sensations. So what? Any ideas?
> Jansy
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was so thick, they fair made ar [our] Maggie blush to suck em.
Probably irrelevant, but when I first saw ³stang,² my reaction was: possibly
archaic, dialect, or mistaken past tense of ³sting.²
Confusion over English (via Anglo-Saxon) weak and strong verbs is pervasive
in dialects and even among educated speakers of ³standard² English. Pinker
has documented the errors made by children in mastering what is undoubtedly
an illogical mess of verb forms: sing/sang/sung; dive/dived/dove;
hang/hanged/hung. Hence, from \sting\, the emergence of a choice between
standard \stung\ and non-standard \stinged\ or \stang\.
SK-B
On 14/01/2010 16:46, "frances assa" <franassa@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Sorry, Jansy. But obviously phallic. Fran Assa
>
> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:25:42 -0200
> From: jansy@AETERN.US
> Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [TOUGHT] TOoL: Asparagus, aspirins and Proust
> - synesthesia through mnemonic feats
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>
> In TOoL there is a quick reference to "asparagus" when Flora's mother has to
> go out herself to get "aspirins" because the maid had bought asparagus in
> their stead. As a wordplay, it is not very apt or funny. But I remembered
> other references to "asparagus" and decided to explore this choice of
> vegetable or sound: the spinning soup in Transparent Things and a description
> of Proust's novel in PF.
>
> Nabokov, in TOoL, twice mocked Proust's "involuntary memory" through its first
> report of a madeleine immersed in an infusion of linden (tilleuil)leaves. In
> his essay about Proust, Samuel Beckett counted six such experiences and wrote
> extensively about Proust's theories. Nabokov, so it seems to me, insists that
> such magical recollections may happen at will, not merely by a chance
> combination of ingredients.
> The link of asparagus and Proust, though, is most intriguing (I only
> recollect, together with the madeleine, a spoon with a crinkling napkin and a
> vague distant glassy noise as the other triggering elements of a synesthetic
> memory in Proust).
>
> Here they are:
> PF (Kinbote,note to line 181)"Speaking of novels,'I said,'you remember we
> decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust¹s rough masterpiece was a
> huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any
> possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a
> colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no
> more...mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness
> repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting
> avenues...light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English
> poets, a flora of metaphors, described by Cocteau, I think as a mirage of
> suspended gardens¹..."
> ADA: (Marina) "contented herself with...what she remembered... as being his
> favorite food zelyonïya shchi... After that...there would be bread-crumbed
> sander (sudak) with boiled potatoes, hazel-hen (ryabchiki) and that special
> asparagus (bezukhanka) which does not produce Proust¹s After-effect, as
> cookbooks say."
> Transparent Things: "...trying to induce a dream ...On the printed page the
> words "likely" and "actually" should be italicized too, at least slightly, to
> indicate a slight breath of wind inclining those characters (in the sense of
> both signs and personae)...Human life can be compared to a person dancing in a
> variety of forms around his own self: thus the vegetables ...encircled a boy
> in his dream - green cucumber, blue eggplant, red beet, Potato pere, Potato
> fils, a girly asparagus, and, oh, many more, their spinning ronde going faster
> and faster and gradually forming a transparent ring of banded colors around a
> dead person or planet...One should bear in mind, however, that there is no
> mirage without a vanishing point, just as there is no lake without a closed
> circle of reliable land."
> From Nabokov's childhood fevers and dellirium (aspirins?) we reach a Proustian
> asparagus ( fairy-tales and dreams?) with an invasion of chaotic spinning
> sensations. So what? Any ideas?
> Jansy
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/