Subject
Going back to Squirrels and Pnin
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A few years ago, I sent to the VN-L an illustration about one of the creation myths*. It suscitated no comments.but I still wonder wherefrom did Nabokov extract his information about Cinderella, her shoes and the story related to furs and squirrels. New search-tools and extensive digitalization makes available all kinds of information derived from rare texts and almost forgotten books [ I just learned that squirrels and beavers (castor) are related to "The Twins", Zeus and the Gods of lightining and thunder, in connection to Japanese Aioina, or Finnish Aiona..]
PNIN: "Margaret Thayer ...said that when she was a child, she imagined Cinderella's glass shoes to be exactly of that greenish blue tint; whereupon Professor Pain remarked that...Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of Russian squirrel fur - vair, in French. It was, he said, an obvious case of the survival of the fittest among words, verre being more evocative than vair which, he submitted, came not from varius, variegated, but from veveritsa, Slavic for a certain beautiful, pale, winter-squirrel fur, having a bluish, or better say sizïy, columbine, shade - 'from columba, Latin for "pigeon ", as somebody here well knows - so you see, Mrs Fire, you were, in general, correct.' "
This paragraph is not only an example of the more usual verbal derivations and metonimies but, among the general distortions, wwe get Pnin's own transformation of "Thayer" into "Fire." In the original "Floating World" myth, the transformation happens in reverse, since Aioina's old sandals became living squirrels, not squirrels were killed to produce Cinderella's "vair" shoes.
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* -The Illustrated Book of Myths: Tales & Legends of the World, selected by Neil Philip and illustrated by Nilesh Mistry ISBN 62-279-0244-3.
In the beginning, the world was nothing but a slushy quagmire. The water and the earth were all mixed up and there was nothing but a great swamp.
Nothing could live there. But in the six skies above and in the six worlds below dwelled gods, demons, and animals.In the foggy and hanging skies of the lower heavens, demons lived. In the star-bearing and high skies of the clouds lived the lesser gods. In the skies of the most high lived Kamui the Creator god [ ].When Kamui created the world, the devil tried to thwart him[ ]Kamui also made many other creatures especially for the world. The first people, the Ainu, had bodies of earth, hair of chickweed, and spines made from sticks of willow[ ].Kamui sent Aioina, the wise man, down from heaven to teach the Ainu how to hunt and to cook. When Aioina returned to heaven after living among people and teaching them many things, the gods all held their noses, crying, "What a terrible smell of human being there is!" They sniffed and sniffed to find out where the stink was coming from. At last they traced the smell to Aioina's clothes. The gods sent him back to earth and refused to let him back into heaven until he left all his clothes behind. Down in the floating world, Aioina's cast of sandals turned into the first squirrels.
Another source: Floating World www.angelfire.com/.../mythology/floatworld.ht... -
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PNIN: "Margaret Thayer ...said that when she was a child, she imagined Cinderella's glass shoes to be exactly of that greenish blue tint; whereupon Professor Pain remarked that...Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of Russian squirrel fur - vair, in French. It was, he said, an obvious case of the survival of the fittest among words, verre being more evocative than vair which, he submitted, came not from varius, variegated, but from veveritsa, Slavic for a certain beautiful, pale, winter-squirrel fur, having a bluish, or better say sizïy, columbine, shade - 'from columba, Latin for "pigeon ", as somebody here well knows - so you see, Mrs Fire, you were, in general, correct.' "
This paragraph is not only an example of the more usual verbal derivations and metonimies but, among the general distortions, wwe get Pnin's own transformation of "Thayer" into "Fire." In the original "Floating World" myth, the transformation happens in reverse, since Aioina's old sandals became living squirrels, not squirrels were killed to produce Cinderella's "vair" shoes.
..................................................................................................................................................................................
* -The Illustrated Book of Myths: Tales & Legends of the World, selected by Neil Philip and illustrated by Nilesh Mistry ISBN 62-279-0244-3.
In the beginning, the world was nothing but a slushy quagmire. The water and the earth were all mixed up and there was nothing but a great swamp.
Nothing could live there. But in the six skies above and in the six worlds below dwelled gods, demons, and animals.In the foggy and hanging skies of the lower heavens, demons lived. In the star-bearing and high skies of the clouds lived the lesser gods. In the skies of the most high lived Kamui the Creator god [ ].When Kamui created the world, the devil tried to thwart him[ ]Kamui also made many other creatures especially for the world. The first people, the Ainu, had bodies of earth, hair of chickweed, and spines made from sticks of willow[ ].Kamui sent Aioina, the wise man, down from heaven to teach the Ainu how to hunt and to cook. When Aioina returned to heaven after living among people and teaching them many things, the gods all held their noses, crying, "What a terrible smell of human being there is!" They sniffed and sniffed to find out where the stink was coming from. At last they traced the smell to Aioina's clothes. The gods sent him back to earth and refused to let him back into heaven until he left all his clothes behind. Down in the floating world, Aioina's cast of sandals turned into the first squirrels.
Another source: Floating World www.angelfire.com/.../mythology/floatworld.ht... -
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/
