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Fw: [NABOKV-L] KQKn "Red Admiral" PF
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From Don Johnson: " The quote at bottom unearthed by the indefatigable Jansy is an informative gem in relation to PF. Here, as in PF, the Red Admiral appears to a harbinger of death (first--the dog Tom; second, Marta [rather than her husband, the intended victim]). This "mortality marker" is made even clearer in DN's translation...revisions clearly establish the immanency of death as signaled by the Red Admiral--just as it does in PF... VN apparently inserted the 1962 PF echoes into the 1968 KQKn English version. BTW, Jane Grayson in her NABOKOV TRANSLATED provides a close comparison of the Russian and English texts of KQK noting the extensive alterations, but, does not (so far as I recall) comment on the significance above items. It is not often that an author has the opportunity to "back-quote" a later work."
JM: I think VN must have had lots of fun working with Dmitri at this 1968 English version, inserting various other back and forth references ( he plunged in this device later on in LATH...). So I see Gogol's Dead Souls was, indeed, a later addition to emphasize the point about the blackclad undertakers. I hesitated to underline it among "death's harbingers" because only the title seemed to fit, not the novel itself.
Another interesting mention is to "Lolita" since althoug VN often used "haze" and "quilt", this time he brought the two together in a short sentence:" Golden haze, puffy bedquilt", mentioned a few lines later in " Then comes a new moment of specious awareness: this golden haze and your room in the hotel, whose name is "The Montevideo" (KQK, chapter 2, page 752 in Collins C.Choice).
Jerry Katsell wrote about an interview of Paul Magid, member of The Flying Karamzov Brothers vaudeville troupe (Door Interview: By Tamara Jaffe-Notier, #190, Nov/Dec 2003):" There’s a lot of juggling going on in Judaism. There’s a tradition called the “bodkin.” The bodkin is a fool who breaks up a solemn ceremony, like a wedding. The bodkin is supposed to make the bride laugh. I’ve been a bodkin a few times. It’s a great job, and juggling is part of that job. There’s a strong tradition in Judaism of letting go of seriousness and enjoying being the fool sometimes. It’s important to be able to enjoy life. People have somehow mixed up morality with the lack of joy. We should enjoy people and have a fun time, but instead we make all these lines you can’t step across.”.
He asked: Is this a tradition Charles Bodkinovich Kinbote, aka VN, might have known about? What about all them Danish stiletto fun times in PF, from ashen fluff and waxwing slain and a final trundle of that empty barrow up the lane?"
JM: This information makes a lot of sense to me. I had been planning to explore the role of clowns and fools but have been totally unable to get anything on the "Commedia Dell'arte" and harlequinesque stunts ( the terrible Brazilian translation I found for KQK was an accidental find while hopefully perusing used books in a library named "Arlequim"...). I would not despise all the other meanings for "bodkin", though. I think VN's irradiating words were "all-inclusive".
JK added a second posting: "Judging by the marvelous photos supplied by Leland de la Durantaye on 1/5/07, Bombycilla garrulous, the Bohemian waxwing, may surely be the waxwing intended in PF. Its breast and belly are the right shade (deep ash-gray), the only shade that could produce that “smudge of ashen fluff” on Shade’s windowpane. The garrulous bird is the hermeneutic jumping-off point of the entire poem and attendant Kinbotean commentary. The Cedar waxwing’s feathering appears too tawny and yellow for the job. The dark yet ashy shading of the Bohemian waxwing also fits well with Priscilla Meyer’'s comments in Find What the Sailor Has Hidden (185) about the bird’s associations with the death theme (Sterbevogel) in the novel."
JM: Again I return to VN's "all-inclusiveness". Our hesitations about Cedar and Bohemian waxwings are part of VN's plans, as I see it. VN must playfully, but intentionally, divide his readers soul's, or factions, using deliberately unsolvable propositions.
Cedar waxwings link us with Kinbote's Cedarn cave and Colleridge. Bohemian waxwings open other inroads to further associations...
An "ashen fluff" doesn't necessarily demand that the waxwing's colours to be "deep ash-gray".
I didn't remember Meyer's reference to the "Sterbevogel" ( now clearly emphasized both by you and Don B. Johnson), but it certainly relates to the Red Admiral's "1001" wing-design signalizing defeat or death.
By the way, while writing about KQK's Red admiral ( "Out of nowhere came a Red Admiral butterfly, settled on the edge of the table, opened its wings and began to fan them slowly as if in breathing. The dark-brown ground was bruised here and there, the scarlet band had faded, the fringes were frayed - but the creature was still so lovely, so festive...") the sentence about its wings ( "the dark brown ground...the scarlet band") is almost vague and, from my totally inexpert attempts to understand the Red Admiral, I remember my perplexity about the browns, located in the so-called underside of the wing - in opposition to the scarlet band. Also VN's other descriptions ( in Pale Fire, linking it to Gradus's necktie, or to Shade's last lines) made me wonder about the red ridges ( so many sunsets...) and the red band, sometimes very subtly outlined above and below the real butterfly. After all, VN had already called our attention to Bosch's central pannel in his triptych of paradise and hell, where a butterfly is incorrectly rendered, with a reversion of the butterfly"s sides ... Could Pale Fire's waxwing have been described with inverted up-and-down sides of the wings?
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JM: I think VN must have had lots of fun working with Dmitri at this 1968 English version, inserting various other back and forth references ( he plunged in this device later on in LATH...). So I see Gogol's Dead Souls was, indeed, a later addition to emphasize the point about the blackclad undertakers. I hesitated to underline it among "death's harbingers" because only the title seemed to fit, not the novel itself.
Another interesting mention is to "Lolita" since althoug VN often used "haze" and "quilt", this time he brought the two together in a short sentence:" Golden haze, puffy bedquilt", mentioned a few lines later in " Then comes a new moment of specious awareness: this golden haze and your room in the hotel, whose name is "The Montevideo" (KQK, chapter 2, page 752 in Collins C.Choice).
Jerry Katsell wrote about an interview of Paul Magid, member of The Flying Karamzov Brothers vaudeville troupe (Door Interview: By Tamara Jaffe-Notier, #190, Nov/Dec 2003):" There’s a lot of juggling going on in Judaism. There’s a tradition called the “bodkin.” The bodkin is a fool who breaks up a solemn ceremony, like a wedding. The bodkin is supposed to make the bride laugh. I’ve been a bodkin a few times. It’s a great job, and juggling is part of that job. There’s a strong tradition in Judaism of letting go of seriousness and enjoying being the fool sometimes. It’s important to be able to enjoy life. People have somehow mixed up morality with the lack of joy. We should enjoy people and have a fun time, but instead we make all these lines you can’t step across.”.
He asked: Is this a tradition Charles Bodkinovich Kinbote, aka VN, might have known about? What about all them Danish stiletto fun times in PF, from ashen fluff and waxwing slain and a final trundle of that empty barrow up the lane?"
JM: This information makes a lot of sense to me. I had been planning to explore the role of clowns and fools but have been totally unable to get anything on the "Commedia Dell'arte" and harlequinesque stunts ( the terrible Brazilian translation I found for KQK was an accidental find while hopefully perusing used books in a library named "Arlequim"...). I would not despise all the other meanings for "bodkin", though. I think VN's irradiating words were "all-inclusive".
JK added a second posting: "Judging by the marvelous photos supplied by Leland de la Durantaye on 1/5/07, Bombycilla garrulous, the Bohemian waxwing, may surely be the waxwing intended in PF. Its breast and belly are the right shade (deep ash-gray), the only shade that could produce that “smudge of ashen fluff” on Shade’s windowpane. The garrulous bird is the hermeneutic jumping-off point of the entire poem and attendant Kinbotean commentary. The Cedar waxwing’s feathering appears too tawny and yellow for the job. The dark yet ashy shading of the Bohemian waxwing also fits well with Priscilla Meyer’'s comments in Find What the Sailor Has Hidden (185) about the bird’s associations with the death theme (Sterbevogel) in the novel."
JM: Again I return to VN's "all-inclusiveness". Our hesitations about Cedar and Bohemian waxwings are part of VN's plans, as I see it. VN must playfully, but intentionally, divide his readers soul's, or factions, using deliberately unsolvable propositions.
Cedar waxwings link us with Kinbote's Cedarn cave and Colleridge. Bohemian waxwings open other inroads to further associations...
An "ashen fluff" doesn't necessarily demand that the waxwing's colours to be "deep ash-gray".
I didn't remember Meyer's reference to the "Sterbevogel" ( now clearly emphasized both by you and Don B. Johnson), but it certainly relates to the Red Admiral's "1001" wing-design signalizing defeat or death.
By the way, while writing about KQK's Red admiral ( "Out of nowhere came a Red Admiral butterfly, settled on the edge of the table, opened its wings and began to fan them slowly as if in breathing. The dark-brown ground was bruised here and there, the scarlet band had faded, the fringes were frayed - but the creature was still so lovely, so festive...") the sentence about its wings ( "the dark brown ground...the scarlet band") is almost vague and, from my totally inexpert attempts to understand the Red Admiral, I remember my perplexity about the browns, located in the so-called underside of the wing - in opposition to the scarlet band. Also VN's other descriptions ( in Pale Fire, linking it to Gradus's necktie, or to Shade's last lines) made me wonder about the red ridges ( so many sunsets...) and the red band, sometimes very subtly outlined above and below the real butterfly. After all, VN had already called our attention to Bosch's central pannel in his triptych of paradise and hell, where a butterfly is incorrectly rendered, with a reversion of the butterfly"s sides ... Could Pale Fire's waxwing have been described with inverted up-and-down sides of the wings?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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