Message

From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 7:45 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: DN on TT's Diablonnet & Versex (fwd) (fwd)

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Date: Friday, August 13, 2004 11:32 AM +1200

From: "Brian Boyd (FOA ENG)" <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>

To: "'D. Barton Johnson '" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>

Subject: RE: DN on TT's Diablonnet & Versex (fwd)

ADA I.13 (85.22): "Essex, Middlesex and Somerset." ADA also has, closer to "home," Ex (partly Chateau d'Oex, near Montreux) and Sex Rouge (a genuine Swiss peak, in the Valais).

-----Original Message-----

From: D. Barton Johnson

To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU

Sent: 8/13/2004 10:47 AM

Subject: Re: DN on TT's Diablonnet & Versex (fwd)

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Date: Thursday, August 12, 2004 7:00 PM -0300

From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>

To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>

Subject: Re: DN on TT's Diablonnet & Versex

Don,

Hasn't VN played with English "Sussex", "Middlesex" and so forth in one of his books? Could "Versex" be a variation on this and as ( punningly) geographical as Dmitri has pointed out?

Jansy

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DBJ REPLY. Probably, but I don't recall where. Perhaps someone else can?

Jeffrey Eugenides, author of _Middlesex_ certainly has. He also did a cute VN spoof so years ago.

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----- Original Message -----

From: DN

To: 'D. Barton Johnson'

Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 11:55 AM

Subject: FW: Cunning Stunts, "Oh, Calcutta" and other stuff (fwd)

Dear Don,

There is quite a bit to be said here some time, but there is one detail to be nailed en passant: proof that Diablonnet is invented, a composite of Diablerets (a large mountain and a village where I have some inherited land) and Blonay (a village six minutes from my place, where our aging family doctor, Jacques Apotheker, still lives --- I am not making this up). Therefore it would be inconsistent and unlikely if Versex (a mix of a whole number of real nearby originals, beginning with Verbier) were a real place name.

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> ===== Original Message From naiman <naiman@socrates.Berkeley.EDU>

> =====

The Oh! Calcutta! gloss is wonderful -- with its explanation of "Edenic"

but we should not neglect Nabokov's transformation of the play's title

-- a shuttling from the anal to the genital. (Is this what is meant by AVANT garde?) The play's title announces a theme that will be picked up again in the next chapter, with the explicit pictures of Armande, her impuberal softness and its middle line, and the shot of her spreading wide "the lovely legs of a giantess." Later we learn about her "crack lovers" who have enjoyed full conjunction in the course of three trips.

The promiscuity (R's preoccupation?) of the novel's leading ladies requires some kind of interpretive treatment. There is a nod to Lolita in the scene from ch. 17 describing Hugh's and Armande's unusual ritual of copulation; note that here it is as if Lolita is forcing Humbert to pretend that nothing is going on (he has to hide the preparations, pretend this is just sofa-talk). The ref. to their being on stage is a nod back to the way Humbert sets the scene in that chapter. Julia, too, is sexually oriented

the adjective in the not very hidden unscrambled title of the play - stunning -- may be echoed when Julia discusses how she wishes to dazzle some people in Moscow. What else is on that list of "darling words" supplied by Armande?

How many other obscenities are in similar near view? John Rea has

mentioned Mr. Pines. The following lines seem particularly suggestive:

"He lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"

"Yes at Diablonnet, near Versex."

"Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees':

yabloni." The presence of VerSEX may trigger a different Russian word

that

sounds like yabloni, common in many vulgar expressions. Perhaps an

additional step (downwards) are the apple trees (with their Edenic

associations and results). Here, I am aware I may be moving out on a

limb,

but Armande Chamar's very name has genital associations (Russian/German)

we see it as two mirrored equivalents framed by two "ar"s.

Nabokov has used Scham before -- openly in Bend Sinister and, I would

argue, in Pnin. I cannot recall other instances of similar play with a

"mand" syllable. Armande's being of both Belgian and Russian origin

(with

Hugh guessing two Germanic possibilities) might be relevant. Not as

clear

a case as that of the Russified Frenchman Konstantin Chateau, but the

theme

is there.

Is this better than the jock talk of the fashionable writers R.

criticizes? Is our task of readers akin to that of the humble

proofreaders

who bring obscenities to the surface? Yet this may be a necessary part

reaching the moment "where the orgasm of art courses through the whole

spine with incomparably more foce than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical

panic." (p.102

Yet one more comment on fit. The final page of the book returns us

the image of a box "grown completely transparent and hollow." We should

recall the box with "Fit" when we read the following line: "This is, I

believe, IT (italicized); not the crude anguish of physical death but

the

incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass fro

mone state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it, son". Is the

final maneuver akin to a proofreader's, replacing fit with it?

And -- to return to the crudeness with which we began -- a word which

appears with strange frequency in TT is stuff (stuffiness 19; Armande

"demanded hard realistic stuff reflecting our age" (books about Violence

and Oriental Wisdom"; the muzzled stuff 31; same stuff 32; Neo buddhism

and

all that stuff 60; really wonderful stuff 76 (ostensibly about R's work

but perhaps about the debauching of Julia, several of these uses are

sexually suggestive); I can't recall VN using this word so often

elsewhere; indeed, it seems like the mark of laziness, and perhaps it is

marker of R's laziness in writing? This is a highly vague and

unnecessary

word -- its repeated use by VN may be a way of distinguishing his

narrator

from the other American writer residing in Switzerland.

Eric

PS While we are on ch. 11, note the way that the mock-arson subverting

supporting Cunning Stunts hints at the real arson at the book's end,

when

Hugh is also expecting a sexual encounter. Of course, nearly every

chapter looks forward to that one, but the link here seems especially

direct.

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D. Barton Johnson

NABOKV-L

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D. Barton Johnson

NABOKV-L

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D. Barton Johnson

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