EDNOTE: The following post is from our long-serving list editor, Donald
Barton Johnson. Sometime in early January, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney and
I will be taking the helm as editors and moderators of Nabokv-l. This
posting is a test of our ability to use the system. Look for messages
from us in January announcing editorial policies and a request for
suggestions. --Stephen Blackwell
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Sasha Dolinin once pointed out to me that a
certain "P.O. Tyomkin" lurked in the LOLITA motel registers that HH
scours vainly in his attempt to recover Lo. Since I was pursuing
allusions in ADA to Grigori Potyomkin (Catherine the Great's lover and
ruler of the Crimea), I tried to find P.O. Temkin (a.k.a. Potyomkin)
in LO. No luck.
In the process I made a small (and probably not
original) discovery. The good general is only in Nabokov's Russian
translation of LOLITA where he replaces an allusion in the English
original to the famed "Person from Porlock" who interupted Coleridge in
the writen recreation of his opium- induced "Kubla Khan."
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II-23 (in which HH infers pseudo-cues)
"Arsene Lupin" was
obvious to a Frenchman who remembered the detective stories of his
youth; and one hardly had to be a Coleridgian to appreciate the trite
poke of "A. Person, Porlock, England." In horrible taste...
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II-23
"Арсен Люпэн" был очевиден полуфранцузу,
помнившему детективные рассказы,
которыми он увлекался в детстве; и едва ли следовало быть
знатоком
кинематографа, чтобы раскусить пошлую подковырку в адресе: "П. О.
Темкин,
Одесса, Техас". В не менее отвратительном вкусе...
Partial translation. ...one hardly had to be a
connoisseur of the cinema in order to see through the crass ploy in the
address "P.O. Tyomkin, Odessa, Texas."...
The reference is, of course, to Eisenstein's
famous film "The Battleship Potyomkin," taken over by revolting sailors
in the Black Sea.