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Re: THOUGHTS: A. Babikov on Amilcar in Transparent Things
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Mr. Babikov's rendering of Wikipedia articles on Amilcar cars is amusing and informative but he overlooks the most important thing that made me mention the Amilcar French company without going into details. VN's novel ends circa 1970, that is more than 30 years after the last Amilcar car had been produced and sold. Do we have any reason to believe that the Swiss lady with a dog would drive around in an antique car? I doubt it. In my view, Nabokov either recycled the name he remembered from 1920s and1930s or reinvented it for his own purpose.
Alexander Dolinin
Sent from my iPad
> On Oct 17, 2014, at 21:33, Stephen Blackwell <sblackwe@UTK.EDU> wrote:
>
> Andrei Babikov, translator of Lolita: A Screenplay and Look at the Harlequins! into Russian, among many other accomplishments, posted the following discovery in Russian on his Facebook page on Sept. 23. He kindly allowed me to post this translation to Nabokv-L. --SB
>
>
>
>
> <10653736_280225742167949_9119722174979983669_n.jpg>
> Amilcar. By Andrei Babikov, Sept 23, 2014
>
> I noticed a subtle detail in the last chapter of Transparent things (which the Nabokovs called Сквозняк из прошлого in Russian [“A draft from the past”], from a line of Nabokov’s poetry, as G. Barabtarlo has pointed out more than once). The omniscient incorporeal narrator mentions an automobile, hurriedly driving away from the hotel with a little dog in the back seat and a lady at the wheel: “The little spitz dog is asleep on the back seat of an Amilcar Driven by the kennelman’s wife back to Trux.” The novel’s translator, S. Ilyin, feels obliged to offer this clarification: “Amilcar—also Hamilcar. This was the name of the Carthaginian strategist, the father of Hannibal.” The question of why Nabokov needs to refer to the ancient strategist in this episode is left hanging.
>
> Another translation, by A. Dolinin and M. Meilakh, reissued this year (“Просвечивающие предметы”), also provides a commentary, still more elaborate: “’Amilcar’ is the made-up name of an automobile, combining Fr. amical (friendly) and Eng. ‘car’; and also evoking associations with Hamilcar (3rd century B.C.) – the Cartheginian commander and hero of Flaubert’s novel Salambo. A French automobile company with that name existed from 1921 to 1940” (p. 379).
>
> Earlier, Dolinin had rightly pointed to the Chekhovian motif of a “Lady with a little dog” in this episode, although the comment about the Amilcar perplexes. Why, yet again, this reference to the dead-end association with the commander and Salambo? “Amilcar” is at first identified as a made-up name, and subsequently turns out to refer to an auto company with that name. So, is Amilcar invented or not?
>
> As it turns out, Amilcar is both the name of the French auto firm, and the name of the car models the firm put out. For example, there was the Amilcar CC, the Amilcar C4, the Amilcar E, etc. The name was formed not by combining amical and car, as Dolinin suggests (though such an explanation is not categorically excluded), but represents a partial anagram of the combined names of the two founders of the firm, Emile Akar and Joseph Lamy.
>
> Finally, why did Nabokov, in his novel about the unfortunate Hugh or You Person, need a reference to precisely this brand of car, which, moreover, had been out of production for so long?
>
> The Amilcar became tragically famous all over the world after the long scarf of Isadora Duncan, seated in the back seat, got caught up in the axle of the open-topped sports model of the Amilcar (the model was identified by Peter Kurth, and even the doomed car’s registration number has been established—see Peter Kurth. ISADORA: A Sensational Life. Little, Brown, 2001) and she was immediately strangled, and her accidental death was reported in hundreds of articles, raised up as a symbol of fate’s persecution of creative personalities, etc.
>
> Just like Nabokov’s character, Isadora was driving away from a hotel in the Amilcar.
>
> So now, it seems, the reason for Nabokov’s recollection of the old and sad famous Amilcar becomes clear, and likewise the reason for the lady with the little dog at the wheel: in this short episode, Nabokov combines two sources: a literary one—the tansparent hint at Chekhov’s “Lady with a Little Dog,” echoing the theme of Transparent Things’s unfaithful heroine; and a historical one—the accidental death by strangling of Isadora Duncan, echoing the theme of the accidental death of the heroine of TT, strangled by her own husband.
>
> And that is the “trick” (“trux”—трюк-с) and the unexpected “draft from the past” (сквозняк из прошлого”).
>
> Afternote:
>
> And of course Yuri Leving, in his excellent book Train Station—Garage—Hangar (2004), is right that in this “Amilcar” VN liked the cloaked mythological Icarus (Икар, И-кар, I-kar), but Leving too appears to consider the automobile to be invented: “In the English version of the story ‘Spring in Fialta,’ Nina perishes in a yellow ‘Icarus,’ while in the Russian version of Lolita, Humbert’s dream-blue car acquires a name that it lacked in the English original—and of course, it is ‘Icarus.’ An anagram of this name is hidden in the auto brand ‘Amilcar’ in Transparent Things, in whose back seat sleeps the spitz from “The Lady with a Little Dog.”
>
> Perhaps VN invented his Icarus as a dissection of the real Amilcar’s name.
>
> -- Translated by Stephen Blackwell.
>
> Google Search
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Alexander Dolinin
Sent from my iPad
> On Oct 17, 2014, at 21:33, Stephen Blackwell <sblackwe@UTK.EDU> wrote:
>
> Andrei Babikov, translator of Lolita: A Screenplay and Look at the Harlequins! into Russian, among many other accomplishments, posted the following discovery in Russian on his Facebook page on Sept. 23. He kindly allowed me to post this translation to Nabokv-L. --SB
>
>
>
>
> <10653736_280225742167949_9119722174979983669_n.jpg>
> Amilcar. By Andrei Babikov, Sept 23, 2014
>
> I noticed a subtle detail in the last chapter of Transparent things (which the Nabokovs called Сквозняк из прошлого in Russian [“A draft from the past”], from a line of Nabokov’s poetry, as G. Barabtarlo has pointed out more than once). The omniscient incorporeal narrator mentions an automobile, hurriedly driving away from the hotel with a little dog in the back seat and a lady at the wheel: “The little spitz dog is asleep on the back seat of an Amilcar Driven by the kennelman’s wife back to Trux.” The novel’s translator, S. Ilyin, feels obliged to offer this clarification: “Amilcar—also Hamilcar. This was the name of the Carthaginian strategist, the father of Hannibal.” The question of why Nabokov needs to refer to the ancient strategist in this episode is left hanging.
>
> Another translation, by A. Dolinin and M. Meilakh, reissued this year (“Просвечивающие предметы”), also provides a commentary, still more elaborate: “’Amilcar’ is the made-up name of an automobile, combining Fr. amical (friendly) and Eng. ‘car’; and also evoking associations with Hamilcar (3rd century B.C.) – the Cartheginian commander and hero of Flaubert’s novel Salambo. A French automobile company with that name existed from 1921 to 1940” (p. 379).
>
> Earlier, Dolinin had rightly pointed to the Chekhovian motif of a “Lady with a little dog” in this episode, although the comment about the Amilcar perplexes. Why, yet again, this reference to the dead-end association with the commander and Salambo? “Amilcar” is at first identified as a made-up name, and subsequently turns out to refer to an auto company with that name. So, is Amilcar invented or not?
>
> As it turns out, Amilcar is both the name of the French auto firm, and the name of the car models the firm put out. For example, there was the Amilcar CC, the Amilcar C4, the Amilcar E, etc. The name was formed not by combining amical and car, as Dolinin suggests (though such an explanation is not categorically excluded), but represents a partial anagram of the combined names of the two founders of the firm, Emile Akar and Joseph Lamy.
>
> Finally, why did Nabokov, in his novel about the unfortunate Hugh or You Person, need a reference to precisely this brand of car, which, moreover, had been out of production for so long?
>
> The Amilcar became tragically famous all over the world after the long scarf of Isadora Duncan, seated in the back seat, got caught up in the axle of the open-topped sports model of the Amilcar (the model was identified by Peter Kurth, and even the doomed car’s registration number has been established—see Peter Kurth. ISADORA: A Sensational Life. Little, Brown, 2001) and she was immediately strangled, and her accidental death was reported in hundreds of articles, raised up as a symbol of fate’s persecution of creative personalities, etc.
>
> Just like Nabokov’s character, Isadora was driving away from a hotel in the Amilcar.
>
> So now, it seems, the reason for Nabokov’s recollection of the old and sad famous Amilcar becomes clear, and likewise the reason for the lady with the little dog at the wheel: in this short episode, Nabokov combines two sources: a literary one—the tansparent hint at Chekhov’s “Lady with a Little Dog,” echoing the theme of Transparent Things’s unfaithful heroine; and a historical one—the accidental death by strangling of Isadora Duncan, echoing the theme of the accidental death of the heroine of TT, strangled by her own husband.
>
> And that is the “trick” (“trux”—трюк-с) and the unexpected “draft from the past” (сквозняк из прошлого”).
>
> Afternote:
>
> And of course Yuri Leving, in his excellent book Train Station—Garage—Hangar (2004), is right that in this “Amilcar” VN liked the cloaked mythological Icarus (Икар, И-кар, I-kar), but Leving too appears to consider the automobile to be invented: “In the English version of the story ‘Spring in Fialta,’ Nina perishes in a yellow ‘Icarus,’ while in the Russian version of Lolita, Humbert’s dream-blue car acquires a name that it lacked in the English original—and of course, it is ‘Icarus.’ An anagram of this name is hidden in the auto brand ‘Amilcar’ in Transparent Things, in whose back seat sleeps the spitz from “The Lady with a Little Dog.”
>
> Perhaps VN invented his Icarus as a dissection of the real Amilcar’s name.
>
> -- Translated by Stephen Blackwell.
>
> Google Search
> the archive Contact
> the Editors NOJ Zembla Nabokv-L
> Policies Subscription options AdaOnline NSJ Ada Annotations L-Soft Search the archive VN Bibliography Blog
> All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L