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Skylark's Day
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Yesterday (Jan. 1) was also Van Veen's birthday. Tomorrow (Jan. 3) is Lucette's birthday. Now it so happened that I was born (41 years ago) "between Van and Lucinda Veen." Because, in a sense, I too am Nabokov's galley slave, may I suggest that Janaury 2 is henceforth celebrated as "Skylark's Day"?
As a birthday present себе любимому ("to my beloved self") I completed today two new versions (Russian & English) of my latest (rather brilliant) essay, "The Red Flower of Evil in Nabokov's Ada."* I hope to make them soon available to fellow Nabokovians. (The Russian version that came out and faded in Topos is no longer valid.)
To divert you a little:
Burning Barn + Rita = burning bar + tiran
Rita + tiran + e = Antiterra + i
Burning Barn - the Night of the Burning Barn, the apotheosis of Ardis (1.19)
Rita - a character in Lolita; a character in Ada
burning bar - "I picked her [Rita] up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw." (2.26) Btw., did anyone notice "Tolstoyan" in "Toylestown" and Blake's Tiger?
tiran - Russ., tyrant; tiran = train
Antiterra (aka Demonia) - Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set
*Incidentally, Aikhenvald speaks of the red flower of evil in his essay on Garshin (included in "The Silhouettes of the Russian Writers")
Happy VNew Year!
Alexey Sklyarenko
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As a birthday present себе любимому ("to my beloved self") I completed today two new versions (Russian & English) of my latest (rather brilliant) essay, "The Red Flower of Evil in Nabokov's Ada."* I hope to make them soon available to fellow Nabokovians. (The Russian version that came out and faded in Topos is no longer valid.)
To divert you a little:
Burning Barn + Rita = burning bar + tiran
Rita + tiran + e = Antiterra + i
Burning Barn - the Night of the Burning Barn, the apotheosis of Ardis (1.19)
Rita - a character in Lolita; a character in Ada
burning bar - "I picked her [Rita] up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw." (2.26) Btw., did anyone notice "Tolstoyan" in "Toylestown" and Blake's Tiger?
tiran - Russ., tyrant; tiran = train
Antiterra (aka Demonia) - Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set
*Incidentally, Aikhenvald speaks of the red flower of evil in his essay on Garshin (included in "The Silhouettes of the Russian Writers")
Happy VNew Year!
Alexey Sklyarenko
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/