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Fwd: Ada: ulybnuvshis' slegka (with a slight smile)
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While reading Ada and some of VN's early reviews, I stumbled on the following:
In Chapter 5 of Ada, Van responds to Marina's remark: "I hope you speak
Russian?" with the words:
"Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly but quite fluently),"
replied Van, slegka ulybnuvshis' (with a slight smile).
Darkbloom says this is "a pet formula of Tolstoy's denoting cool
superiority, if not smugness, in a character's manner of speech.."
Does anyone recall a place in Tolstoy where this formulation occurs? An
odd thing is that the phrase surfaces in Nabokov's 1928 review of Dovid
Knut's book of poetry, where it is part of two lines that -- according to
Nabokov -- ruin an otherwise splendid poem. "zatem, chtob teper' na
blestiashchem salonnom parkete ia mog poklonit'sia tebe, ulybnuvshis'
slegka" (slegka!). Nabokov obviously draws particular attention to the
"slegka" as absurd.
Why exactly does "ulybnushis' slegka" so bad? Is the absurdity semantic --
the ridiculousness of doing something in order to do something else w. a
slight smile -- or stylistic, in which case it undercuts Van as well? (or
did VN forget he criticized this in Knut when he found in in Tolstoy). Or
is the whole point that you can add an s to both "legkii" and "light" and
in either case it works for a description of this smile?
Eric Naiman
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