Subject
TT question: solution (fwd)
Date
Body
NABOKOVIANS: Jeff Edmunds offers the ingenious solution to his question about
why Hugh Person mis-remembers the Ascot hotel's shutters are green instead
of red (the mnemoptical trick). I shall be interested in reactions.
I went over the chapter (II) and noted the "green-aproned valet"
but failed to make Jeff's connections. In case someone wants to pursue it,
I poked around with chromesthetic letter correspondences. In SpM, VN
describes "p" as "unripe apple." Connection with "aPron"? The reddish
letters are, however "m" & "v" and don't seem to link up with any key word
in the text. The "tt" of "shutter" is, alas, "pistachio"--another yellow
green--so there doesn't seem to be anything going on there. But perhaps I
am missing something.
IF YOU WANT TO WORK OUT YOUR OWN SOLUTION BEFORE SEEING JEFF'S, DO
NOT READ ANY FURTHER. The Editor.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 11:01:21 -0500 (EST)
From: JEFF EDMUNDS <JHE@PSULIAS.BITNET>
To: NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.BITNET
Subject: TT question: solution
NABOKOVIANS:
Here is my full solution to the question I posed last week: What is
the nature of the mnemoptical trick which causes Hugh Person, in chapter 2
of Transparent Things, to remember the hotel's cherry-red shutters as being
apple green?
Don Johnson, Ted Ficklen, and Jay Edelnant were all quick to point out
that by the principle of Color Opponency, the color of an afterimage is the
complimentary of the color of the object which caused it. Gene Barabtarlo
emphasized that apple green (which tends more towards yellow than towards
blue) is indeed the complimentary of magenta (or cherry red). All this
explains perfectly the "optical" part of the trick.
But what has memory to do with it? With respect to the "mnemo-" part
of the trick, I offer the following solution:
Our first small clue is the mention, in the chapter's first sentence,
of a vowel switch: "Hugh Person ... pronounced 'Parson' by some". Also
relevant, although its relevance become obvious only later, is the fact
that Hugh speaks both English and French. In checking into the hotel, he
uses both--this is, after all, Switzerland, and both languages are floating
around in Person's head.
It is in the first paragraph that we are told that the hotel "sported
cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some mnemoptical trick
he remembered as apple green." The minor mystery would end there were it
not for the reappearance of the term "apple-green" in the chapter's final
paragraph in the form of an "apple-green-aproned valet". (The valet has
already appeared in paragraph 1, but the color of his apron is not then
specified). Something funny's going on here.
The mot-clef is "valet". Spelled and (very nearly)
pronounced the same in English and in French, it is the word which opens,
so to speak, the door between the English and French sections of Hugh's
brain (and who better to open a door than a servant?) How does this relate
to the hotel's shutters? "Shutter" in French is commonly rendered as
"volet", which is only a vowel away (as Parson is from Person) from "valet"
. What's more, the valet is wearing an apple-green _apron_. Apron in French
is "tablier", and "tablier" can also connote (as even the small French/
English dictionary on my desk confirms) "flue-shutter; (iron or steel)
shutter".
In Person's Anglo-French brain the color associated with the valet's
"tablier" is transferred to the hotel's "volets". The transfer is
reinforced by the principle of Color Opponency and the happy coincidence
that shutters and apron are of complimentary colors.
So runs my explanation of this marvelous transposition of Hugh's.
Jeff Edmunds
why Hugh Person mis-remembers the Ascot hotel's shutters are green instead
of red (the mnemoptical trick). I shall be interested in reactions.
I went over the chapter (II) and noted the "green-aproned valet"
but failed to make Jeff's connections. In case someone wants to pursue it,
I poked around with chromesthetic letter correspondences. In SpM, VN
describes "p" as "unripe apple." Connection with "aPron"? The reddish
letters are, however "m" & "v" and don't seem to link up with any key word
in the text. The "tt" of "shutter" is, alas, "pistachio"--another yellow
green--so there doesn't seem to be anything going on there. But perhaps I
am missing something.
IF YOU WANT TO WORK OUT YOUR OWN SOLUTION BEFORE SEEING JEFF'S, DO
NOT READ ANY FURTHER. The Editor.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 11:01:21 -0500 (EST)
From: JEFF EDMUNDS <JHE@PSULIAS.BITNET>
To: NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.BITNET
Subject: TT question: solution
NABOKOVIANS:
Here is my full solution to the question I posed last week: What is
the nature of the mnemoptical trick which causes Hugh Person, in chapter 2
of Transparent Things, to remember the hotel's cherry-red shutters as being
apple green?
Don Johnson, Ted Ficklen, and Jay Edelnant were all quick to point out
that by the principle of Color Opponency, the color of an afterimage is the
complimentary of the color of the object which caused it. Gene Barabtarlo
emphasized that apple green (which tends more towards yellow than towards
blue) is indeed the complimentary of magenta (or cherry red). All this
explains perfectly the "optical" part of the trick.
But what has memory to do with it? With respect to the "mnemo-" part
of the trick, I offer the following solution:
Our first small clue is the mention, in the chapter's first sentence,
of a vowel switch: "Hugh Person ... pronounced 'Parson' by some". Also
relevant, although its relevance become obvious only later, is the fact
that Hugh speaks both English and French. In checking into the hotel, he
uses both--this is, after all, Switzerland, and both languages are floating
around in Person's head.
It is in the first paragraph that we are told that the hotel "sported
cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some mnemoptical trick
he remembered as apple green." The minor mystery would end there were it
not for the reappearance of the term "apple-green" in the chapter's final
paragraph in the form of an "apple-green-aproned valet". (The valet has
already appeared in paragraph 1, but the color of his apron is not then
specified). Something funny's going on here.
The mot-clef is "valet". Spelled and (very nearly)
pronounced the same in English and in French, it is the word which opens,
so to speak, the door between the English and French sections of Hugh's
brain (and who better to open a door than a servant?) How does this relate
to the hotel's shutters? "Shutter" in French is commonly rendered as
"volet", which is only a vowel away (as Parson is from Person) from "valet"
. What's more, the valet is wearing an apple-green _apron_. Apron in French
is "tablier", and "tablier" can also connote (as even the small French/
English dictionary on my desk confirms) "flue-shutter; (iron or steel)
shutter".
In Person's Anglo-French brain the color associated with the valet's
"tablier" is transferred to the hotel's "volets". The transfer is
reinforced by the principle of Color Opponency and the happy coincidence
that shutters and apron are of complimentary colors.
So runs my explanation of this marvelous transposition of Hugh's.
Jeff Edmunds