A.Sklyarenko:
"Trying to remember his family name,
the hero of LATH, Vadim Vadimych, mentions his British and American passports:
"The U.S.A. passport recently issued me ... did not mention my ancestral title;
this had figured, though, on my British passport, throughout its several
editions" ...Mayakovsky is the author of the famous Стихи о советском пасспорте
("Verses on the Soviet Passport")."
JM: I remember an episode (no
page & no precise information right now) VN described to
Edmund Wilson, related to the president of a segregated college where he
delivered a lecture in America. Perhaps
Nabokov is alluding to it through Vadim, too - albeit very indirectly.
Perhaps the information my come in useful, any way: when this
American educator went to Great Britain he was always addressed
as "Colonel". Later he realized that this happened because his American
passport had Col. (colored) added to his name. Without re-telling this
story, VN often referred to this "colored"... I think he had Kinbote add
something in Pale Fire. There is certainly VN himself in SM.
George Shimanovich ["Woody Allen equally managed...Excess of
seriousness in this phrase is ironic. Comparing VN with Woody in that way is
kind of ... woody. I...disagree with agile part"]
JM: My news about the sighting was equally
woody, particularly in the first posting when I no longer had the
original by me and tried to render it by memory! It's difficult to translate the kind of
humor present in Verissimo's short and informal text. He often
develops a Nabokovian frame of mind with multiple alusions people may often
miss ( and he doesn't care, nor does he explain). In the present case, the
title "With or Without Abyss" is applicable to a joke about two dwarfs, one
jumping up to reach the counter to order a bottle of water while, on
the opposite side of the counter, the other keeps asking, in vain:
"with or without bubbles?" (sparkling water is "com gas", plain is "sem gas").
Verissimo's text is bubbly and the tone ("excess", "balance")
is impossible to balance in a quick translation ... (
Verissimo once started his biography with "I majored in
Literature and I drown in drink to forget..." making reference, by the
rythm of the lines only , to a song of the fifties sung by V.Celestino:
"Tornei-me um ébrio, na bebida busco esquecer," - when a drunkard sings
about his unfaithful lady. I suppose he must have been referring to
his age, his generation and to his love for treacherous
literature).
Frances Assa:
"...truth is the underside of comedy (but, unfortunately, the converse
doesn't seem right.) I'm surprised at the Graham Greene choice...And of
course someone with both an ear for comedy and pathos was just the right person
to "discover" Lolita! Dimitri somewhere mentioned that he had read some of
Greene's novels at home as a youngster, but never revealed which ones nor
whether VN enjoyed any. Since I see parallels between the writers, I'd
certainly like to know."
JM: Verissimo compared GG's
novels (dealing withsin, religion and politics) to his other
writings named "divertissements."
His reference to GG and to Woody
Allen in connection to Nabokov, and in such an
unpretentious article, reveals his particular sensibility
to "innuendoes" and to comedy&pathos. He mainly parodies
poshlost and travels alternating easily the sibilant in
"comic/cosmic."