----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Fw: Fw: Translation of German Lolita -- page 3 of
4
...."the prelude
to the adventure of riding the swan..."
What does this
mean?
EDNOTE. A good
question. The faint bells it tinkles for me are: 1) I think VN in his
GOGOL book uses the swan shtick as an an example of
"poshlost'
Yes, that's it.
Actually, I have never quite understood why hitching a ride on a swan to
impress a girl is any more poshlustish than any other foolish daredevil stunt. .
. (Would someone please tell me why this story so epitomizes
poshlust.)
There is a joke
about catching the next swan ( Lohengrin ) in "Laughter in the
Dark"
Yes, the image in Gogol, like the new text, does have the ring of
grand German opera: "And since that time a curse lies on the family. The women
all give birth to a daughter, and within weeks of their child's birth, they
always go mad. . . ." But perhaps Nabokov did not steal the image from Lichberg;
a closer reading of the texts suggests it could have been planted in him by a
ghost.
Unfortunately (speaking of "a closer reading"), I see Nabokov attributes
the story to Gogol himself, but I'll hang on to my notions like a
crackpot.
Walter Miale