JM: Carolyn, just a reminder ( A.S's
word-worlds are catchy): Duchess de Fyler and Countess Fleur taken
together reveal ( VN doesn't "veil" that...) not only a "defilement"
but a "deflowering".
Shade's experience suggests a different kind
of defilement "... like some little
lad forced by a wench/ With his pure tongue her abject thirst to
quench,/ I was corrupted, terrified,
allured.." I remember vaguely that you thought Aunt Maud was
responsible for his defilement - somehow?
btw - CTaH wrote: "Prends garde a toi!" and I know
you are familiar with operas (Bizet's "Carmen"), therefore ye must
be aware of the double-entendre addressed to you, o brown-limbed
Carmencita...
Although he dismissed my emphasis on "sans,sans"
standing in lieu of "without" ( I cannot agree with his points in this
matter) his French brings in a direct link to VN's Lolita. A few years
back and... [hmmmm...Hey,Steve? Are you still in charge of adminstrating
dowries ?]
...............................................................................................................................................................................................
Stan
K-B: I'm trying hard to recall where VN
wrote "I've said all I have to say," to whom and about which topic. I expect
many will rush to remind me.
Tom
(Rymour): ...the authority on this would be DN.
I seem to remember an account of father and son on a Swiss mountain one day, and
VN telling his son that he had achieved his literary objectives.
A. Bouazza: "He told me then, in one of those rare moments
when father and son discuss such matters, that he had accomplished what he
wished in life and art, and was truly a happy man. His writing, he went on, was
all there,
ready inside his mind, like film waiting to be developed." p. 129,
Dmitri Nabokov, On Revisiting Father's Room, in Valdimir Nabokov: A Tribute, ed.
Peter Quennell (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1979).
S
K-B ( to Andrea): It's rather a mixed blessing to find that Gardner and
Nabokov did NOT engage in direct, extensive correspondence!Yet, yet: where does
Valéry stand now compared with Nabokov in those impromptu league tables of
"Celeb Immortality?""Le don de vivre a passé dans les fleurs" (Valéry's
seaside-cemetry epitaph) [...]
S K-B (CTaH to Carolyn): I have sympathy over your overt
rejection of "logic" (see your reply to my IF/THEN options) but remind you that
behind the scenes, as it were, your brain continues to protect your life
[..] But "logic" does peek through when you write "EITHER continuations OR
re-writes of Jekyll and Hyde." Logicians need to distinguish inclusive from
exclusive ORs (the 'wh' is silent). Furthermore, Shade himself resorts to
syllogistic reasoning on several (in)famous occasions. Prends garde a
toi!
S K-B (to Jansy) may I correct or maybe burnish what
_might_ be a misunderstanding on your part: "Sans" was a normal, unexotic
synonym for "without" in Shakespeare's time...For iambics, it's rather useful
have mono-and bi-syllabic synonyms. "Sans" like many Elizabethan words,
gradually wilted but never completely withered away! 18th century and later
writers would use "sans" in what you might call a deliberately "archaic" manner
much as we find "ye" and "gazooks."
The point is: not to endow Fitzgerald's
or Kinbote's choice of "sans" with any special sprinkling of
allusion-glitter.
C. Kunin: Thanks to CTaH's taking notice of the absence of
Aunt M from the index, and my subsequent discovery that the Duchess de Fyler is
also missing, I'd like to press the point a little forward[...] The Duchess de
Fyler is missing from the index, but her daughter, Fleur, Countess de Fyler is
not. Similarly Sybil is giving grudging acknowledgement there.