Subject
Re: Library of America, round 2 (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Brian Boyd <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
My warmest thanks to those (including faithful old friends) who responded to
my earlier round of queries for the Library of America series. The following
items remain unresolved in the next volume (page refs all to Vintage editions);
help from Francophone Nabokovians especially welcome for Maupassant,
Balzac, Fargue, Cagliostro:
Real Life of Sebsatian Knight
6 redheels of the old regime in Russia] ?? why redheels??
64 Sebastian, being annoyed by the caterwauls in the street, started to pelt
the offenders with miscellaneous objects including an egg. Presently a
policeman knocked at his door, bringing back all these objects minus the egg. .
. from an old . . . Jerome K. Jerome book] which?? I have skimmed (but
perhaps too rapidly) Three Men on a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel, My Life
and Times with no success.
171 that breathless phrase in that second-rate Maupassant story: "I have
forgotten a book"] ??
Bend Sinister
112 "who came to heal and went away to die"]
156 "Civil war is destroying Rome . . . "]
157 hair (as coarse as that of Balzac . . . )] I have skimmed some
biographies to no effect
173 that cramped uncomfortable "I," that chess-Mephisto concealed in the
*cogito*?] The cogito is clear, the Mephisto not. Vera Nabokov glossed for
Dieter Zimmer (10 February 1962): "The so-called chess automaton. See, f. ex.,
in Poe's Essay. A clever devil concealed in the soi-disant automaton."
Speak, Memory
40 Frank Riseley] (tennis player)
129 Fargue . . . Les Qautres Journees . . . se glace de bleu comme l'aile du
grand Sylvain] "The Four Days" (19??) by Leon Paul Fargue (1874-1947), l.
?? I cannot find a text here: for the moment I just need date and line nos.
146 Brigadier Samuel McCroskey] ??
165 The following lines are quoted as if from late in Lermontov's poema
"Mtsyri": "Blue, green and orange, wonderstruck / With its own loveliness and
luck, / Across a crag a rainbow fell / And captured there a poised gazelle." In
Drugie berega they are given as: "O, kak skvozili v vyshine / v zeleno-rozovom
ogne, / gde raduga zadela el' / skala i na skale gazel'!" But I cannot find them in
"Mtsyri."
199 Dilanov-Tomski] ("fashionable poet" of late 19C)
235 Harlamov] (painter)
303 the heap of dead heads the seer Cagliostro glimpsed in the ha-ha of a
royal garden] (the garden is Versailles, the date the late 1780s: but does
anyone have a precise source?)
From: Associate Professor Brian Boyd
English Department
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand
Fax (64 9) 373 7429 Tel (64 9) 373 7599 ext 7480
Home fax/tel: (64 9) 620 6597
e-mail: bboyd@auckland.ac.nz
My warmest thanks to those (including faithful old friends) who responded to
my earlier round of queries for the Library of America series. The following
items remain unresolved in the next volume (page refs all to Vintage editions);
help from Francophone Nabokovians especially welcome for Maupassant,
Balzac, Fargue, Cagliostro:
Real Life of Sebsatian Knight
6 redheels of the old regime in Russia] ?? why redheels??
64 Sebastian, being annoyed by the caterwauls in the street, started to pelt
the offenders with miscellaneous objects including an egg. Presently a
policeman knocked at his door, bringing back all these objects minus the egg. .
. from an old . . . Jerome K. Jerome book] which?? I have skimmed (but
perhaps too rapidly) Three Men on a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel, My Life
and Times with no success.
171 that breathless phrase in that second-rate Maupassant story: "I have
forgotten a book"] ??
Bend Sinister
112 "who came to heal and went away to die"]
156 "Civil war is destroying Rome . . . "]
157 hair (as coarse as that of Balzac . . . )] I have skimmed some
biographies to no effect
173 that cramped uncomfortable "I," that chess-Mephisto concealed in the
*cogito*?] The cogito is clear, the Mephisto not. Vera Nabokov glossed for
Dieter Zimmer (10 February 1962): "The so-called chess automaton. See, f. ex.,
in Poe's Essay. A clever devil concealed in the soi-disant automaton."
Speak, Memory
40 Frank Riseley] (tennis player)
129 Fargue . . . Les Qautres Journees . . . se glace de bleu comme l'aile du
grand Sylvain] "The Four Days" (19??) by Leon Paul Fargue (1874-1947), l.
?? I cannot find a text here: for the moment I just need date and line nos.
146 Brigadier Samuel McCroskey] ??
165 The following lines are quoted as if from late in Lermontov's poema
"Mtsyri": "Blue, green and orange, wonderstruck / With its own loveliness and
luck, / Across a crag a rainbow fell / And captured there a poised gazelle." In
Drugie berega they are given as: "O, kak skvozili v vyshine / v zeleno-rozovom
ogne, / gde raduga zadela el' / skala i na skale gazel'!" But I cannot find them in
"Mtsyri."
199 Dilanov-Tomski] ("fashionable poet" of late 19C)
235 Harlamov] (painter)
303 the heap of dead heads the seer Cagliostro glimpsed in the ha-ha of a
royal garden] (the garden is Versailles, the date the late 1780s: but does
anyone have a precise source?)
From: Associate Professor Brian Boyd
English Department
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand
Fax (64 9) 373 7429 Tel (64 9) 373 7599 ext 7480
Home fax/tel: (64 9) 620 6597
e-mail: bboyd@auckland.ac.nz