B.W (off-list to JM) Speak, Memory, the final paragraph of
the first chapter’s second section: “Neither in
environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me,
the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark
whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine
through life’s foolscap.” (p. 25 in the Vintage paperback)
JM: Thank you! This is the quote I had in
mind. A unique design made visible by the lamp of art.
There are two corrections to my last posting: Wild's name in Ivan's
novel is "Philidor Sauvage".* And his novel is "My
Laura."
"My Laura" is contained in TOoL, along with Hubert Hubert,
but (...and that one is risky) it seems that TOoL is,
paradoxically, enclosed in "My Laura." I haven't yet figured out how
this works ( I'm all in a tangle).
.....................................................................
* - The original article by Edmund Wilson
which VN discusses in SO, in connection to the French word "Sauvage," is
found in Volume 4, Number
12 · July 15, 1965 The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov. Excerpt from
one paragraph: "In the commentary, you find "a not-too-trust-worthy
account that a later friend of Pushkin's…left us," where the English requires
"has left"; but there is only one past tense in Russian where we have three, and
Russians often make these mistakes. The handling of French is peculiar. The
heroine of La Nouvelle Héloïse is given on one page as Julie and on the next as
Julia; and he always speaks of "the monde," instead of either "the world" or "le
monde." And why "his sauvage nature" when no French word
exists in the Russian? As for the classics: his Eol and Zoilus ought to
be Aeolus and Zoïlus; and his "automatons and homunculi" ought to be "automata,"
etc. And although he quotes Virgil in Latin, his speaking of the eclogues of
"the overrated Virgil" as "stale imitations of the idyls of Theocritus" would
seem to demonstrate that he cannot have had any very close acquaintance with
this poet in the original, since Virgil, unlike Theocritus, is particularly
accomplished in those qualities—tight verbal pattern and subtle effects of
sound—which Nabokov particularly admires." (retrieved from: nybooks/articles/12829 )