A. Andreu wrote
about his "French writer, Guy de Maupassant,
author of the short story La Parure, i.e La Rivière de Diamants in Ada,
could enter in one of your categories, I think. Henry James in whom VN took sometimes some interest,
even if didn't like his style and manierisms.." and
made me think about all the other authors about whom VN lavislhy commented in
the interviews published in "Strong Opinions", detailing what he liked
and disliked about particular books by certain authors, or about the authors
themselves.
CHW remembered VN's scathing comments about
Ezra Pound.
These answers were prompted by Sergei:I think VN mentions Leskov in this context somewhere.But what about
non-russian or emigrant writers?
In "ADA" we find a wide list of critical remarks not only
about Guy de Maupassant, but other French poets and writers: Baudelaire,
Rimbaud, Chateaubriand, Molière, Racine ( also mentioned in "Lolita"). There is
German Goethe ( also mentioned in "Pale Fire") and tons of references to Swift,
Donne, Pope, the Lake Poets ( Wordsworth), Romantics ( Byron, Keats),
Hemmingway, Faulkner,Cowper, Shakespeare,Sir Richard Burton and translations
of Arab poetry, Cervantes...
It would be interesting to list the poets VN never wrote
about.But, since our List is mainly propelled by American VN
readers, quite often works that are outside the scope of American LIt. get
little response.
After Dmitri described KQK as "VN's
German novel" I began to wonder, with a certain chagrin, how it would stimulate
the interest of the majority of the List contributors. In my eyes its
interestest is almost "ontogenetical", there are so many seeds of VN's later
ideas and comments.Unfortunately I could not locate the
place where his S.O's observation about the "precision of poetry and fantasy of
science" was outlined for the first time, but if I do, I'll add it some time in
the future. I don't consider it a "second-rate" novel by a first-rate
writer, even if I can only read it "second-hand".
In a former posting about what kind of card game is proposed
in KQK, I suggested "All Fours" because of
the "plus-fours" (cf. page 770)
and "thing trying to rise on all fours, and
grabbed it," (cf. page 925). Then a certain "Hindu
Student" indicated about the original cards's link
with India.Here I got a sentence that connects both in a very disquieting
way: "Old Enricht, clad only in his nightshirt, was standing
on all fours with his wrinkled and hoary rear toward a
brilliant cheval glass. Bending low his congested face, fringed
with white hair, like the head of the professor in the 'Hindu
Prince' farce, he was perring back through the archway of his bare
thighs at the reflection of his bleak buttocks" (page 799). Nevertheless,
the same Enricht envisioned himself as an Arab conjuror, Menetek El-Farshin
(807/808), bringing up the "farce", the "gutter-percher acrobats" and the
double-heads in card-decks ( that will later reappear, as a Queen of Hearts,
when Lucette and Ada make love).
The character named Dreyer is more often, rather insistently
so compared to the "Joker", not the King, whereas his wife Martha is
certainly presented as "the Queen".
I don't think there are "jokers" in Poker?
Inspite of submitted to translation there are
sentences that retain VN's wordplays and sounds. Such as: "Berlin: in the lumber and rumble of the first syllable
...( "derlin, derlin" went the bell of the waiter)" as, also, his luminous descriptions of gestures and landscapes.Or
his light sexual quips: " she
shook off the ash of her cigarette"( page 803); "push
against her and pant out his passion" (777)