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Re: Pale Fire Commentary on Line 130]
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Carolyn Kunin [to Jansy's "I'm curious about why Kinbote introduced a Gillette, instead of a Wilkinson blade.".] Jansy, This one is easy: because in Russian the safety razor is not a 'Vilkinsonka,' but a Zhiletka, as I wrote!
Alexey Sjklyarenko [to Carolyn's CK's "zhiletka po-russky, deriving from Gillette"] Zhiletka is colloquial for zhilet, "waistcoat." We borrowed it from the French, along with the phrase pleurer dans le gilet de qn (poplakat'sya komu-l. v zhiletku).
Mikwe Marcus: The character of Helena in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well is based on Gillette de Narbonne in Boccaccio's Decameron, story #9. She is therefore an "ancient Gillette", as it were.
Jansy Mello: I remembered Wilkinson's blades because they are related to England and to swords, which feature in Pale Fire, too (flowerlet, botkin,stiletto...).
Besides, judging from his comments in "Lolita" and in "Pale Fire," we should consider that Nabokov enjoyed newspaper and magazine adds (btw: Gradus used a safety razor to extract a newspaper clipping.)
The Decameron/Shakespeare link is very elaborate and scholarly. Sometimes it's worth to bet on simpler connections. Although Nabokov was a genius with words, language and signifiers, themselves, express a kind of autonomous genius of their own.
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Alexey Sjklyarenko [to Carolyn's CK's "zhiletka po-russky, deriving from Gillette"] Zhiletka is colloquial for zhilet, "waistcoat." We borrowed it from the French, along with the phrase pleurer dans le gilet de qn (poplakat'sya komu-l. v zhiletku).
Mikwe Marcus: The character of Helena in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well is based on Gillette de Narbonne in Boccaccio's Decameron, story #9. She is therefore an "ancient Gillette", as it were.
Jansy Mello: I remembered Wilkinson's blades because they are related to England and to swords, which feature in Pale Fire, too (flowerlet, botkin,stiletto...).
Besides, judging from his comments in "Lolita" and in "Pale Fire," we should consider that Nabokov enjoyed newspaper and magazine adds (btw: Gradus used a safety razor to extract a newspaper clipping.)
The Decameron/Shakespeare link is very elaborate and scholarly. Sometimes it's worth to bet on simpler connections. Although Nabokov was a genius with words, language and signifiers, themselves, express a kind of autonomous genius of their own.
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
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/