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Fw: TT-19 Introductory Notes (re-revised)
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----- Original Message -----
From: Akiko Nakata
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU ; chtodel@cox.net
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2004 7:08 PM
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72.05: Pauline: The first of three P names appearing in this chapter. The others are of a couple, Phil and Phyllis. As Misha has pointed out, Pauline has an echo from Paul Plam (Ch. 9).
73.07-08: around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and scrapes suddenly came from above: The sounds from the inscrutable sculpture reminds me of the statue that comes bumping to Don Juan for dinner. The inscrutable sculpture also seems to be related with the mysterious colossus we have seen in HP's dreams (Ch. 16).
73.10: *anide*: Brian Boyd explains "anide" in the LoA edition notes as "Anidian, formless, lacking differentiation (of an embryo or fetus). I found that in Webster 3 as the definition of "anidian," and I think the meanings Brian cites matches the text, but I could not find that "anide" equals "anidian." A website has "anide" as a synonym of "acardiaque," i. e., "acardiac" in English. Cf. Vulgaris-Medical: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:SGeEfe-j_QcJ:www.vulgaris-medical.com/v1/%3Fp%3Dindex_fiche%26id_article%3D5331+anide&hl=ja . The other "anide" hit was in a Spanish verb conjugation table. "Anidar">"anide" means 1. to nest, 2. to live. I would be grateful if someone would explain the Spanish verb. I do not understand why the Belgian sculptor named his work made from a French (or Belgian) woman in Spanish, though.
73.26-30: she [went back] to her book, which was a French touring guide that listed many splendid restaurants, forked and starred, but not very many "pleasant, quiet, well-situated hotels" with three or more turrets and sometimes a little red songbird on a twig: Her book seems to be Le Guide Rouge, Michelin. Does it have turrets and red songbirds too?
74.01: One of his characters is consulting a Michelin: as if Armande and HP were two characters of *Tralatitions*. HP is proofreading the novel, in which he is proofreading the novel, in which . . . making Chinese boxes. We have already seen some foreshadowings, say, a green figurine of a female skier or the cover illustration of "Figures in a Golden Window." Their reading scene goes farther because it is a sort of infinite regression "into" the book, besides, proofreading is one of the important motifs.
74.02-03: there's many a mile between Condom in Gascogne and Pussy in Savoie: They are real place names.
74.09-10: I used to play tennis mentally when I was young: HP used to imagine to shoot perfect Person Strokes as a means to fall asleep, but gave it up when he married Armande (Ch. 16).
74.34-75.02: R. showed a mother and daughter regaling their young lover with spectacular caresses on a mountain ledge above a scenic chasm and in other less perilous spots: The model of the young lover is presumably Christian Pines, who "was the lover of both mother and daughter, whom he had serviced in Cavaliere, Cal., during two summers" (Ch. 10). If we count Pines too, there are four P names.
75.04-05: coon-bear grunts during copulation: An entry added to the list of animals (or animal metaphors).
75.08-10: Although the author *had* made her fair-haired, and played down the Eurasian quality of her beauty: As Mr. R. said in the previous chapter, "no matter how drastically you changed the image, its prototype would remain recognizable by the shape of the hole left in the texture of the tale" (Ch. 18).
75.13-15: his eye and his spine (the true reader's main organ) collaborating rather than occluding each other: Cf. "In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass." "Good Readers and Good Writers" in *Lectures on Literature*.
75.19-20: the huge battered one [dictionary] in the office: Probably Webster 2 VN used. It has all the words that puzzle HP here.
75.17: rimiform: In botany, shaped like a slit (from Latin *rima*, "narrow furrow"). From BB's notes to the LoA edition.
75.17: balanic plum: Balan- or balano-, a combinative form, glans penis. Ibid.
75.21: kew tree: Ginkgo. Ibid.
75.22: nebris: Faun skin; in classical art, worn by Dionysus, satrys, etc. Ibid.
75.24-25: or was the entire combination a sly scramble?: As BB notes, "Adam von Librikov" is an anagram of Vladmir Nabokov. Ibid.
76.01-02: had it been in her childhood . . . as delectably described in the novel? Or did he flirt with her in her first college year. . .?: Neither is what we heard in Ch. 11: "Julia, who according to Phil had been debauched at thirteen by R., right at the start of her mother's disastrous marriage." Too obvious an allusion to *Lolita*.
76.09: How good to have *that* type of talent!: I wonder why "that" is italicized. The narrator refers to the talent of pedophilia?
Akiko Nakata