Subject
Re: Parluggian Owl (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Gennadi Barabtarlo <gragb@mizzou1.missouri.edu>
----
According to Liddell and Scott, aegolius is "an unknown bird" mentioned by
Pliny, a screeching owl of some description. In a sense, one can say that
that funereal mythic bird is a Terra-Latinized *Sirin* of sorts -- which
would only strengthen Professor Dolinin's "Luga" (or rather "near Luga", or
"quasi-Luga") suggestion, with which I tend to agree.
Speaking of Sirin: as I'm teaching Luzhin's Defence this semester
(in a "Contemp. Prose in Transl." course), I have ordered and got from
Indiana U. a video version of the Robert Hughes 1966 half-hour film
mentioned in this space by Charles Nicol. The copy is quite good, incl. the
soundtrack, and this delightful and awkward film is definitely worth seeing
and showing, if only because it captures little things, and scenes, and
slips of the tongue, that have never been captured on printed page (where
many of the statements appeared in subsequent interviews collected in SO),
such as VN's playing (awful) chess with VeN (who told me that she barely
knew the moves) and laughing most endearingly all the time; or his playing
a goalkeeper on a Montreux lawn, with some boys probably supplied by
Hughes; or the face he pulls (and keeps for 10 seconds) when asked about
the absence of American writers on his list of the 20th century supreme
writers; or his trying, at the very end of the film, to speak over the loud
bell-ringing of a church somewhere in the background, and failing to do so,
so that the knell accompanies his last monologue almost until credits start
rolling. Could it be the church in Vevey, the only Russian one in the
neighborhood? if so, the episode is quite remarkable in a special
Nabokovian way, for his funeral was to take place in Vevey's in St Martin
Centre fun=E9raire, which overlooks the church. I have a picture of the
setting and I'll try to place it in the Zembla space. GB
Gennady Barabtarlo
451 GCB University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
314-882-9454 Fax 314-882-3404
----
According to Liddell and Scott, aegolius is "an unknown bird" mentioned by
Pliny, a screeching owl of some description. In a sense, one can say that
that funereal mythic bird is a Terra-Latinized *Sirin* of sorts -- which
would only strengthen Professor Dolinin's "Luga" (or rather "near Luga", or
"quasi-Luga") suggestion, with which I tend to agree.
Speaking of Sirin: as I'm teaching Luzhin's Defence this semester
(in a "Contemp. Prose in Transl." course), I have ordered and got from
Indiana U. a video version of the Robert Hughes 1966 half-hour film
mentioned in this space by Charles Nicol. The copy is quite good, incl. the
soundtrack, and this delightful and awkward film is definitely worth seeing
and showing, if only because it captures little things, and scenes, and
slips of the tongue, that have never been captured on printed page (where
many of the statements appeared in subsequent interviews collected in SO),
such as VN's playing (awful) chess with VeN (who told me that she barely
knew the moves) and laughing most endearingly all the time; or his playing
a goalkeeper on a Montreux lawn, with some boys probably supplied by
Hughes; or the face he pulls (and keeps for 10 seconds) when asked about
the absence of American writers on his list of the 20th century supreme
writers; or his trying, at the very end of the film, to speak over the loud
bell-ringing of a church somewhere in the background, and failing to do so,
so that the knell accompanies his last monologue almost until credits start
rolling. Could it be the church in Vevey, the only Russian one in the
neighborhood? if so, the episode is quite remarkable in a special
Nabokovian way, for his funeral was to take place in Vevey's in St Martin
Centre fun=E9raire, which overlooks the church. I have a picture of the
setting and I'll try to place it in the Zembla space. GB
Gennady Barabtarlo
451 GCB University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
314-882-9454 Fax 314-882-3404