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Re: {THOUGHTS] Nabokov's Botticelli
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PS to Gavriel Shapiro's "for Botticelli-related references and allusions in Lolita, see The Sublime Artist's Studio, 46-47."
A good Samaritan helped me with the references found in Gavriel Shapiro's book:
"In Lolita, when thinking of the title heroine, Humbert speaks of "those wet, matted eyelashes," evidently referring to Botticelli's Birth of Venus (...), which he names later in the novel when comparing the girl to "Botticelli's russet Venus - the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty"(...)
Humbert also points to "that tinge of Botticellian pink" ( ... ) that is manifest in the Three Graces in Primavera (...) In the Ur-Lolita novella, The Enchanter (...), Nabokov speaks of "a priceless original: sleeping girl, oil. Her face in its soft nest of curls, cattered here, wadded together there, with those little fissures on her parched lips, and that special crease in the eyelids over the barely joined lashes, had a russet, roseate tint where the lighted cheek - whose Florentine outline was a smile in itself - showed through" (..) The description reads like a curious cross between Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Giorgine's Sleeping Venus (...).// Finally, in Look at the Harlequins, his last completed novel, Nabokov refers to Primavera directly. In his letter,which contains the marriage proposal to Annette Blagovo, Vadim Vadimovich, the bedridden protagonist of the novel, implores his addressee:" Do not write... and when you come...please, if you do, wear, in propitious sign, the Florentine hat that looks like a cluster of wild flowers. I want you to celebrate your resemblance to the fifth girl from left to right, the flower-decked blonde with the straaight nose and serious gray eyes, in Botticelli's Primavera, an allegory of Spring, my love, my allegory." (LATH 107)
Just like in the other example found in Bend Sinister (Ember's nostrils), Botticelli is specially connected to pink (a red-haired girl's flushed sensitive skin): this is the "Botticellian pink," associated with an inflamed, blurred, or matted coloring. Actually this delicate smokiness corresponds to my recollection of Botticelli's paintings Florence: the clear radiance lay elsewhere, although it could still be felt.
Of course, I bring here a very subjective appraisal but, then, how can we really be sure that the colors we see are like the colors other people discern under the same name?
Jean Holabird's "Vladimir Nabokov Alphabet in Color" also strikes me as dimly lit, as in her rendering of the letter V (for Vladimir?).
Nabokov himself (quoted by JH) states that he has "at last perfectly matched V with "Rose Quartz" in Maerr and Paul's Dictionary of Color."
Perhaps V corresponds to a Botticellian pink, as it's reproduced in the aforementioned dictionary?
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A good Samaritan helped me with the references found in Gavriel Shapiro's book:
"In Lolita, when thinking of the title heroine, Humbert speaks of "those wet, matted eyelashes," evidently referring to Botticelli's Birth of Venus (...), which he names later in the novel when comparing the girl to "Botticelli's russet Venus - the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty"(...)
Humbert also points to "that tinge of Botticellian pink" ( ... ) that is manifest in the Three Graces in Primavera (...) In the Ur-Lolita novella, The Enchanter (...), Nabokov speaks of "a priceless original: sleeping girl, oil. Her face in its soft nest of curls, cattered here, wadded together there, with those little fissures on her parched lips, and that special crease in the eyelids over the barely joined lashes, had a russet, roseate tint where the lighted cheek - whose Florentine outline was a smile in itself - showed through" (..) The description reads like a curious cross between Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Giorgine's Sleeping Venus (...).// Finally, in Look at the Harlequins, his last completed novel, Nabokov refers to Primavera directly. In his letter,which contains the marriage proposal to Annette Blagovo, Vadim Vadimovich, the bedridden protagonist of the novel, implores his addressee:" Do not write... and when you come...please, if you do, wear, in propitious sign, the Florentine hat that looks like a cluster of wild flowers. I want you to celebrate your resemblance to the fifth girl from left to right, the flower-decked blonde with the straaight nose and serious gray eyes, in Botticelli's Primavera, an allegory of Spring, my love, my allegory." (LATH 107)
Just like in the other example found in Bend Sinister (Ember's nostrils), Botticelli is specially connected to pink (a red-haired girl's flushed sensitive skin): this is the "Botticellian pink," associated with an inflamed, blurred, or matted coloring. Actually this delicate smokiness corresponds to my recollection of Botticelli's paintings Florence: the clear radiance lay elsewhere, although it could still be felt.
Of course, I bring here a very subjective appraisal but, then, how can we really be sure that the colors we see are like the colors other people discern under the same name?
Jean Holabird's "Vladimir Nabokov Alphabet in Color" also strikes me as dimly lit, as in her rendering of the letter V (for Vladimir?).
Nabokov himself (quoted by JH) states that he has "at last perfectly matched V with "Rose Quartz" in Maerr and Paul's Dictionary of Color."
Perhaps V corresponds to a Botticellian pink, as it's reproduced in the aforementioned dictionary?
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/