Looking for more references about what
specific works by Havelock Ellis were read, or perused, by Nabokov, I
pored through Appel's annotations to "Lolita." A depressing job since,
by eliminating their context, the entries seemed in great part to
be childishly obscene. I came
across three references to Ellis:
(a) The first one is about "uranists"
(homosexuals) "Havelock Ellis uses it in Chapter Five of Psychology of Sex
(1938) and claims the term was invented by the nineteenth-century legal official
Karl Ulrichs." (p.337,note 16/1);
(b) the second brings up a different
date for Ellis oeuvre: "What H.H says is true, and Nabokov thought H.H
may have got it from somewhere in Havelock Ellis's monumental, many-volumed
Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1891)" (p.341/2,
note19/8);
(c) the third, on page 425 (250/3)
"...(Havelock Ellis was an 'undinist," or 'fountainist,' and so was
Leopold Bloom.) Ellis was the first to use the word this way... section on
"Undinism" in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol.
VII."
There was no way to ascertain
that Nabokov has read Ellis's item on "vair" eyes, but it seems
that VN examined different editions, at different times, either in English
or in French. As reported before, Edmund Wilson supplied Nabokov
with volume six of Havelock Ellis's Etudes de Psychologie Sexuelle
(Paris, 1926). Brian Boyd's ( RY,400) succint entry only mentions
a copy of Ellis in English borrowed by George Hessen from a library.
Considering Nabokov's interest in medieval
French texts ( Troubadours such as Adam de la Halle; courtly love and la
"Carte du Tendre", Ronsard, Belleau) and a
reference by H.H. to the book "La Beauté Humaine" (the theme
of Ellis's Ch. II), which Appel considers to have been invented
by Nabokov*, I have reason to believe that he did.
Any ideas?
.....................................................................................................................................................
PS: The Nab-List postings were not about "slit,"
as I surmised, but about "cleft." Here are Appel's references to the
"scarlet thread" (359, 47/3)
"Belleau's 'the hillock velveted with delicate moss,/traced in the middle
with a little scarlet thread'."
Mark its translator's "hillock" and the
exchange about "cleft."
Cf. Nab-L, October, 2010, listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1005
# 62. Sklyarenko:
Lermontov's Shashka (excerpt from AS's rendering): "He reached out his hand -
the hand/ touched the wall [...] Here is a round little knee... and here,/ Here
- but why do you laugh beforehand? -/ Here it found itself on the twin hill..."
In a previous posting AS noted: "Tirza's ..." ("twin hill", and not breasts
are meant) somehow reminds me of Brownhill, Ada's school for girls, and its
headmistress, Miss Cleft (1.27)."
# 68:
JM: Not breasts for a lady's "twin hills"? So, instead of
laughing "beforehand," we should rotate from the knees and reach the buttocks to
smile at.... an "afterhand"? Is this what you mean?*
#
69 JM: "vulval cleft." (cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica) is another option for
the proffered association to "cleft" - one that doesn't need a rotational
motion to reach a female's "twin hills."
# 73
RSGwynn: Wouldn't "mons veneris" be applicable here?
# 80 JM: Mons
veneris, discreet hillocks in opposition to other discrete
buttocks?
*Cf. AL,p.335:
"The book is invented, as is its author, whose name is a play on 'nichon,' a
French (slang) epithet for the female breast."