Dear List,
I once posted a message about the word
"Alptraum", mispelled as "Albtraum" in the newspaper announcement of
VN's German translation of "Speak Memory".
At the time I was trying to establish a link
with "Transparent Things" and the oscilations between "Alpentraum" ( Alpine
dreams...) and "Alptraum" ( Nightmare). I was not successful. Yesterday I picked up "ADA" to check if the mention to Attic,
Stabian girl and Pompeiianella might point to Freud's 1906 work about
Wilhelm Jensen's novel "Gradiva". There was no way to discover any connection...
In between, the word "Alptraum" came back through
Nabokov's various references, in ADA, to the Alps, alpine flowers, Dr.
Lapiner and Dr.Alpiner.
Might VN have hidden any nightmare
word-play association to the Alps?
There were the already explored word-plays and allusions concerning
"nightmares":
(a) "...protected from nightmares and stallions" ( Lucette).
(b) Van had a ‘verbal’ nightmare, caused, maybe, by the musky smell in the
Miramas (Bouches Rouges-du-Rhône) Villa Venus.
Below are sentences that gained, for me, a special
emotional flavor when I thought about Alp and Nightmare, added
to rouge (red & hot) and rude.( Freudians: a mockery with castration
anxiety?Oedipus? Partial repressions?)
1. Aqua: I
know you want to examine my pudendron, the Hairy Alpine
Rose in her album[ ...] the
anguish increased to unendurable massivity and nightmare
dimensions, making her scream and
vomit.
2.
highly romantic blizzard, in a mountain refuge on Sex Rouge, where a
Dr Alpiner, general practitioner and gentian-lover, sat
providentially waiting near a rude red stove ...
3. the
old Cyrillitsa, a nightmare alphabet which Dan had never been
able to master...
4. ‘Van,’
she said, ‘I must tell you my dream before I forget. You and I were high
up in the Alps — Why on earth are you wearing townclothes?’
(...) she had always
known that disaster would come today or
tomorrow...
5.This
was a rude, stout article with a convenient grip and an
alpenstockish point capable of gouging out
translucent bulging eyes (a nightmarish
point)
6. We all
know those old wardrobes in old hotels in the Old
World subalpine zone. At first one opens them
...the growing groan...the hellish hinge is taken by surprise... Van and
Ada... knew that
certain memories had to be left closed, lest they wrench every nerve of the soul
with their monstrous moan.. ( skeleton in a
wardrobe?)