Subject
Re: Fwd: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
"Rast"
"Rast"
From
Date
Body
Could there be a play on Peter de Rast and Peter der Ast, which I think
in German would mean Peter the bough or branch?
Brian Howell
On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 07:38:31 -0700, "Donald B. Johnson"
<chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> said:
> EDNOTE. To Alexey's "berry" ponderings I would call attention to VN
> second poen
> dedicated to his slain cousin Yuri Rausch (circa 1930? & called "To a
> Friend)
> that heavily involves "whortleberries" and death.
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from skylark05@mail.ru -----
> Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 23:13:09 +0400
> From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Reply-To: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new
> question about
> "Rast"
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
>
> Dear Jansy and the List,
>
> "the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
> partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
> remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de
> Rast...)"
>
> Here is the connection between "Baldy," "Peter de Rast," "scratching" and
> Pushkin's fatal duel.
>
> "Baldy" as the name of an oak clearly alludes to Pushkin: the name of his
> family
> estate where he spent his two most fertile autumns (in 1830 and 1833) was
> Boldino, and one of his most famous lines (the opening line of his first
> long
> poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila") is U lukomor'ia dub zelionyi ("There is a
> green
> oak at the sea shore"). There is in ADA only one brief glimpse of
> Pushkin, in a
> chapter that deals with Ada's fits of scratching (1.17):
>
> "'Sladko! (Sweet!)' Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different
> species
> [of mosquitoes] in Yukon."
>
> Now, Pushkin was fatally wounded in his duel with d'Anthes who was the
> adopted
> son and a lover of the Dutch ambassador in St. Petersburg, Baron de
> Heeckeren,
> the inveterate pederast (he never had a romance with a woman). If I
> remember
> correctly, the Baron was a lover of paintings and had a fairly good
> collection
> at his house in Vienna (where he served after he had been expelled from
> St.
> Petersburg).
>
> Note that Pushkin's exclamation ("Sladko!") is prompted by a tactile
> sensation
> caused by a mosquito bite, while normally of course we would exclaim it
> after
> feasting on something sweet, say, berries (for instance, Mandelstam's
> raspberries. The motif of blood and that of berries are inseparably
> connected
> in Ada.
>
> Interestingly, the names of two Soviet secret police heads were Yagoda
> (the name
> is stressed on the second syllable, but, when stressed on the first
> syllable, it
> is Russian for "berry) and Beria (which is rather close to the English
> "berry").
> It is worth noting that VN played on the name of the third head of NKVD
> (secret
> police), Ezhov (which comes from iozh, "a hedgehog"), in his play Sobytie
> ("The
> Event"). It is diffucult to decide who of the three men was the cruelest
> (perhaps, it was Beria), and it is small comfort to know that all three
> were
> eventually executed.
>
> I very much would like to know if Nabokov knew the name of Stalin's
> secretary
> and "aid-de-camp," Poskriobyshev. I need it for the note I currently work
> on,
> "Grattez le Tartare..." or Nabokov's Revenge upon Napoleon." I will
> appreciate
> all information about it.
>
> best,
> Alexey
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Donald B. Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 4:13 PM
> Subject: Fwd: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
>
>
>
> EDNOTE. Whatever else VN may have had in mind, "Peter de Rast"
> is certainly a play on "pederast". I seem to recall a
> "bare-shouldered" lad
> that King Kinbote encounters on his escape from Nova Zembla,
> ---------------------------
>
> ----- Forwarded message from pstock@brandeis.edu -----
> Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:04:06 -0400
> From: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
> Reply-To: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
> Subject: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
> To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
> I don't know about real-life Peters de Rast. And I hope that I haven't
> somehow missed what follows in a previous post. But given the
> passage's
> mixing of sex and childhood, doesn't Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast,
> for
> democratic Netherlanders) suggest "pederast"? This would link to the
> lad's
> bare shoulder. This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we
> recall the marked emphasis in HH's pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided
> childhood--as opposed to the more commonplace interpretations of this
> crime,
> which arguably are concerned more with tarring and feathering the
> pederast
> than with comprehending the effect on the victim. Meanwhile, Lucette
> looks
> on . . . .
>
> Humbly submitted,
>
> David Powelstock
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> Behalf
> Of Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
>
>
>
> Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,
>
> Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can
> be. I
> saw Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the "hunted
> enchanters" inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was
> not
> in his screen-play.
>
> Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a
> reference to
> a Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov
> himself, who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but
> still
> strong old oak".
> Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
> The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
> partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
> remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de
> Rast...)
>
> In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum
> "rake"
> from "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing.
> Google
> took me to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes.
> In
> it there was Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn, een
> toonladder (makam) in de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.
>
> I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the
> Curds, to
> the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".
>
> I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the
> reference
> is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what
> of
> the four cows and the lad in rags?
>
> "as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one
> shoulder
> bare"
>
> Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called
> Peter de
> Rast? The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is
> produced by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.
>
> Jansy
>
>
>
> _____
>
> I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In
> Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the
> hotel is
> called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey
> but (as
> far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose
> idea
> it was?
>
> Anthony Stadlen
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> I don't know about real-life Peters de Rast. And I hope that I haven't
> somehow missed what follows in a previous post. But given the passage's
> mixing
> of sex and childhood, doesn't Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast, for
> democratic
> Netherlanders) suggest "pederast"? This would link to the lad's bare
> shoulder.
> This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we recall the
> marked
> emphasis in HH's pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided childhood--as
> opposed to
> the more commonplace interpretations of this crime, which arguably are
> concerned more with tarring and feathering the pederast than with
> comprehending
> the effect on the victim. Meanwhile, Lucette looks on . . . .
>
> Humbly submitted,
>
> David Powelstock
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
> Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
>
>
>
> Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,
>
> Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can
> be. I saw
> Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the "hunted enchanters"
> inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was not in his
> screen-play.
>
> Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a
> reference to a
> Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov
> himself,
> who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but still
> strong old
> oak".
> Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
> The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
> partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
> remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de
> Rast...)
>
> In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum
> "rake" from
> "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing. Google
> took me
> to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes. In it
> there was
> Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn, een toonladder
> (makam) in
> de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.
>
> I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the
> Curds, to
> the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".
>
> I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the
> reference
> is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what
> of the
> four cows and the lad in rags?
>
> "as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one
> shoulder
> bare"
>
> Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called
> Peter de
> Rast? The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is
> produced
> by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.
>
> Jansy
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In
> Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the hotel
> is
> called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey but
> (as
> far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose
> idea it
> was?
>
> Anthony Stadlen
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
in German would mean Peter the bough or branch?
Brian Howell
On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 07:38:31 -0700, "Donald B. Johnson"
<chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> said:
> EDNOTE. To Alexey's "berry" ponderings I would call attention to VN
> second poen
> dedicated to his slain cousin Yuri Rausch (circa 1930? & called "To a
> Friend)
> that heavily involves "whortleberries" and death.
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from skylark05@mail.ru -----
> Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 23:13:09 +0400
> From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Reply-To: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new
> question about
> "Rast"
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
>
> Dear Jansy and the List,
>
> "the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
> partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
> remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de
> Rast...)"
>
> Here is the connection between "Baldy," "Peter de Rast," "scratching" and
> Pushkin's fatal duel.
>
> "Baldy" as the name of an oak clearly alludes to Pushkin: the name of his
> family
> estate where he spent his two most fertile autumns (in 1830 and 1833) was
> Boldino, and one of his most famous lines (the opening line of his first
> long
> poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila") is U lukomor'ia dub zelionyi ("There is a
> green
> oak at the sea shore"). There is in ADA only one brief glimpse of
> Pushkin, in a
> chapter that deals with Ada's fits of scratching (1.17):
>
> "'Sladko! (Sweet!)' Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different
> species
> [of mosquitoes] in Yukon."
>
> Now, Pushkin was fatally wounded in his duel with d'Anthes who was the
> adopted
> son and a lover of the Dutch ambassador in St. Petersburg, Baron de
> Heeckeren,
> the inveterate pederast (he never had a romance with a woman). If I
> remember
> correctly, the Baron was a lover of paintings and had a fairly good
> collection
> at his house in Vienna (where he served after he had been expelled from
> St.
> Petersburg).
>
> Note that Pushkin's exclamation ("Sladko!") is prompted by a tactile
> sensation
> caused by a mosquito bite, while normally of course we would exclaim it
> after
> feasting on something sweet, say, berries (for instance, Mandelstam's
> raspberries. The motif of blood and that of berries are inseparably
> connected
> in Ada.
>
> Interestingly, the names of two Soviet secret police heads were Yagoda
> (the name
> is stressed on the second syllable, but, when stressed on the first
> syllable, it
> is Russian for "berry) and Beria (which is rather close to the English
> "berry").
> It is worth noting that VN played on the name of the third head of NKVD
> (secret
> police), Ezhov (which comes from iozh, "a hedgehog"), in his play Sobytie
> ("The
> Event"). It is diffucult to decide who of the three men was the cruelest
> (perhaps, it was Beria), and it is small comfort to know that all three
> were
> eventually executed.
>
> I very much would like to know if Nabokov knew the name of Stalin's
> secretary
> and "aid-de-camp," Poskriobyshev. I need it for the note I currently work
> on,
> "Grattez le Tartare..." or Nabokov's Revenge upon Napoleon." I will
> appreciate
> all information about it.
>
> best,
> Alexey
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Donald B. Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 4:13 PM
> Subject: Fwd: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
>
>
>
> EDNOTE. Whatever else VN may have had in mind, "Peter de Rast"
> is certainly a play on "pederast". I seem to recall a
> "bare-shouldered" lad
> that King Kinbote encounters on his escape from Nova Zembla,
> ---------------------------
>
> ----- Forwarded message from pstock@brandeis.edu -----
> Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:04:06 -0400
> From: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
> Reply-To: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
> Subject: RE: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
> To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
> I don't know about real-life Peters de Rast. And I hope that I haven't
> somehow missed what follows in a previous post. But given the
> passage's
> mixing of sex and childhood, doesn't Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast,
> for
> democratic Netherlanders) suggest "pederast"? This would link to the
> lad's
> bare shoulder. This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we
> recall the marked emphasis in HH's pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided
> childhood--as opposed to the more commonplace interpretations of this
> crime,
> which arguably are concerned more with tarring and feathering the
> pederast
> than with comprehending the effect on the victim. Meanwhile, Lucette
> looks
> on . . . .
>
> Humbly submitted,
>
> David Powelstock
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> Behalf
> Of Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
>
>
>
> Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,
>
> Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can
> be. I
> saw Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the "hunted
> enchanters" inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was
> not
> in his screen-play.
>
> Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a
> reference to
> a Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov
> himself, who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but
> still
> strong old oak".
> Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
> The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
> partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
> remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de
> Rast...)
>
> In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum
> "rake"
> from "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing.
> took me to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes.
> In
> it there was Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn, een
> toonladder (makam) in de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.
>
> I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the
> Curds, to
> the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".
>
> I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the
> reference
> is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what
> of
> the four cows and the lad in rags?
>
> "as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one
> shoulder
> bare"
>
> Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called
> Peter de
> Rast? The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is
> produced by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.
>
> Jansy
>
>
>
> _____
>
> I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In
> Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the
> hotel is
> called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey
> but (as
> far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose
> idea
> it was?
>
> Anthony Stadlen
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> I don't know about real-life Peters de Rast. And I hope that I haven't
> somehow missed what follows in a previous post. But given the passage's
> mixing
> of sex and childhood, doesn't Peter de Rast (alias Pieter Rast, for
> democratic
> Netherlanders) suggest "pederast"? This would link to the lad's bare
> shoulder.
> This makes more sense in this passage, I think, when we recall the
> marked
> emphasis in HH's pederasty in Lolita on stolen/elided childhood--as
> opposed to
> the more commonplace interpretations of this crime, which arguably are
> concerned more with tarring and feathering the pederast than with
> comprehending
> the effect on the victim. Meanwhile, Lucette looks on . . . .
>
> Humbly submitted,
>
> David Powelstock
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
> Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:55 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Meaning of "Enchanter" and a new question about
> "Rast"
>
>
>
> Dear List and Anthony Stadlen,
>
> Nabokov never ceases to surprise us and show how inattentive one can
> be. I saw
> Kubrick´s movie several times and never noticed the "hunted enchanters"
> inversion. Would Nabokov have suggested it? You say it was not in his
> screen-play.
>
> Today, reading again the message I had posted, where there is a
> reference to a
> Peter de Rast, I thought that there we could see the image of Nabokov
> himself,
> who composed the lines atributed to Brown as the "balding but still
> strong old
> oak".
> Then I became curious about the word "Rast".
> The sentence is: the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
> partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I
> remember,Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de
> Rast...)
>
> In my regular dictionary I found a reference to the latin rastrum
> "rake" from
> "radere ras" that means " to scrape".It was not very convincing. Google
> took me
> to Van Veen´s Holland and their paintings with pastoral scenes. In it
> there was
> Rast as : Koerdisch voor geluk of een rechte lijn, een toonladder
> (makam) in
> de Turkse muziek, Perzisch voor waarheid.
>
> I don´t speak Dutch but I understood there were references to the
> Curds, to
> the Turks and to the Persian. Rast, in Persian, would mean " Truth".
>
> I´m still confused about Nabokov as a balding oak in Ardis, if the
> reference
> is indeed to our VN. Would he be the colossus in the painting? And what
> of the
> four cows and the lad in rags?
>
> "as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one
> shoulder
> bare"
>
> Any known rural painting? Any known painter or lithographer called
> Peter de
> Rast? The "rake/scratch" meaning could apply to how a lithography is
> produced
> by scratching a slab of stone, or so I imagine.
>
> Jansy
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have asked the List this question before, but nobody answered. In
> Kubrick's film "Lolita" (but not in VN's published screenplay) the hotel
> is
> called The Hunted Enchanters. Can anyone see the point of this jokey but
> (as
> far as I can see) utterly unfunny inversion, and does anyone know whose
> idea it
> was?
>
> Anthony Stadlen
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----