AS: The phrase seksual'nyi levsha
("a sexually left-handed person", in the sense "a homosexual") occurs in
Nabokov's Soglyadatay ("The Eye", 1930). A character refers thus of the
narrator, a Russian emigre named Smurov.
SKB: Meanwhile, the slur on kithogues
typified by Nabokov’s “sexually left-handed” shows no sign of
disappearing.
JM: In "Pale
Fire" we find (Shade, lines 911-914): I’m in the class of fussy
bimanists./ As a
discreet ephebe in tights assists / A
female in an acrobatic dance,/ My left hand
helps, and holds, and shifts its stance.
If I got the point, Shade's left hand (an
"ephebe") apparently sustains or follows his right hand (a female in
acrobatic dance). Soon afterwards we reach line 920 with Kinbote's
comments on the two Alfreds and Shade's Gillette. The same ambidextrous game
happens when Oswin Bretwit and Gradus meet: Kinbote offers an echo of
this echo...
Perhaps now we can
re-evaluate another "reversal" concerning Shade's lines on a torquated
beauty and "reading from left to right in winter's code":
"Whose spurred feet
have crossed/ From
left to right the blank page of the road? / Reading from left to right in
winter’s code:.../ Was he in Sherlock Holmes,
the fellow whose/ Tracks pointed back when he reversed his
shoes?"