Cata stophe! Or a word to that effect, a Pninian cry of dismay.
The message below was written in weary haste last night and meant as a reply to Eric Naiman only. Unfortunately, I apparently sent it out to the whole list.
What I would like to add, as a corrective is the, well, the corrected, extensively corrected scramble of notes I wrote last night. I spent the first hour of dawn on this, and since it has already been sent to Mr. Naiman, I may as well share it with any who may be interested. It’s much better than the first draft.
My apologies to all, for this egregious howling, blooming, act of foolishness.
A humble and contrite Andrew Brown begs you to please read the real Pichon Papers below.
On 9/1/06 12:28 AM, "Andrew Brown" <as-brown@COMCAST.NET> wrote:
Pichon, the Milton of early Humbert's Eden
The passage that nears its end with young Humbert's describing a sumptuous art book filched from beneath the old National Graphics in the generous Hotel Library starts on the previous page with a description of Humbert’s childhood universe.
His generous, Godlike father, so different from the God of Milton’s paradise lost, has apparently left the gates open to Adam and Eve on the Mediterranean side of Eden.
Happy, healthy young Humbert delights in a world of illustrated books. clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs and other items that will appear again (and again) as Young Humbert’s first real love affair takes place.
Note that as this passage moves from fresh outdoor beauty to the indoors. More talk of the beneficent and loving and debonair dad. The rose garden discussion where the American kid fills in theoretical details in the puberty talk.
Note, the poor American kid, son of a motion picture actress he seldom saw in real life. Neither youngsters have their true beauties on hand. Such is life.
But one day, searching through the depths of what the library has to offer, Humbert pulls out a plum, one of the most famed volumes of nude photography of the day. Pichon’s La Beaute Humaine. Not single figures doing pointless gardening, but shots made on a slow setting, with sepia film and low light, with sometimes entangled figures, beautiful figures, daring artists’ models, figures from the demimonde, cavalrymen, nobility, whose skin tones, particularly where they fold timelessly, barely draped, or undrapped, supine on curtains and rugs, bent and straining limps, muscular arms, stirred and passionate eyes, smiles and tears, generous bellies with navels that glowed as they furled timelessly. Gleaming and eloquent buttocks, nearly surreal works of the body in which dimples and side indentations held twin luminescent beaming folds suggesting a thousand things, from excellent muffins to the slow fading sunrise or sunset lustre of pearl and umbra, and the suggestion that the thirteen year old, through a tensing of muscles and total concentration of the will could somehow enter this scene.
So, I submit that Humbert’s education is adumbrated in eternal animal spirits and incuriousity, to evolve to include a happy, sun-bronzed childhood, to further develop through instructive friends and father, and finally to the Hotel Library, where some (Not VN) might claim that the unconscious mind, OR, if you are infinitely lucky, so lucky the seraphs in heaven envy you and the fast approaching she, before the great fall from innocence that was about to befall the Mirana and all Europe, then you might have your one tangled encounter in the mimosa grove, under a haze of stars, that aching of all muscles, the biscuity odor of the Spanish maids stolen powder ... “the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and that ... little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me forever since.”
And then the fall. The knight has received the unhealing wound. A grail has appeared, and disappeared. Dead in Corfu. No way back.
Andrew Stuart Brown
On 8/30/06 9:40 AM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: pearl and umbra
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: naiman@berkeley.edu
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
References: <44E36424.8030001@utk.edu> <mailto:44E36424.8030001@utk.edu> <200608161855.k7GItUaM041467@smtp-vbr10.xs4all.nl> <mailto:200608161855.k7GItUaM041467@smtp-vbr10.xs4all.nl>
It might not be as enticing as "swooners" but I wonder if the term "pearl
and umbra" is Nabokov's coinage. From Humbert's usage, I had assumed it
was a technical -- but richly connotative -- term with prior use. Having
tried to find other uses, I'm not so sure. The Russian
"zhemchuzhno-matovye" sounds more clearly poetic and descriptive. Does
anyone know if "pearl and umbra" was used before Lolita? (Most Google
hits refer to a 1999 collaborative music album put together by Russell
Mills.)
Eric Naiman
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