JM: ""petard" in French has different meanings (fire-cracker, an explosive bomb, a strong kick to the soccer-ball, etc)",
LH: In French slang, "pétard" also has the meaning of "bottom", usually "big bottom" (un gros pétard); it is also a rolled cigarette with hashish or marijuana.
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:45:43 -0200
From: jansy@AETERN.US
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] ftor
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
A.Sklyarenko [to JM:There seems to be no justified reason to jumble "Torf/Fort/Tfor/Trof." Madame Trofim Fartukoff belongs, rather, to the lineage of "pets" (another sort of gases)] "Tfor" doesn't exist at all. Except a German would mispronounce thus dvor ("court[yard]" in Russian); You seem to confuse Blanche's husband, Trofim Fartukov (Russian coachman whose name comes from fartuk, "apron"), with his predecessor at Ardis, Ben Right..."
JM: Van quotes Marina, when she refers to "rural rapes", and to what would have been Ben Wright’s "last petard at Ardis." (p.316). We know that he was succeded by another coachman four years later, Trofim Fartukoff, the one who married Blanche after warning Van to lay off her, in his eyes a befouled, destroyed maid who shouldn't be touched not even through an "apron".
The two "objects" (Bengal Ben and Trofim) were blended together with the passing of time (Van uses the two as an example in one of his musings about time and space).
V.Darkbloom plays with the word "petard," saying that "Mr Ben Wright, a poet in his own right, is associated throughout with pets (farts)," for "petard" in French has different meanings (fire-cracker, an explosive bomb, a strong kick to the soccer-ball, etc), only analogically related to "farts"... as far as I know. It was this wordplay which authorized me to encounter "farts" in "Fartukoff." I have checked the names of the flying Wright brothers (Orville and Wilbur) and we can also cancell a reference to their flying machines or to the children's grand-father Dedalus.
Now what?
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