If I may be allowed a completely frivolous comment, I took time off from working on Nabokov to attend the Westminster Dog Show this year. Audience sentiment for best in show was clearly for the dachshund. The judges, however, saw fit to give best in show to a silly-looking Pekinese. VN would have been appalled—as were we!
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Nabokv-L
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 5:16 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Westminster dog show may not love them, but Nabokov did: Dachshunds ...
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Westminster dog show may not love them, but Nabokov did: Dachshunds ... |
From: Jansy <jansy@aetern.us> |
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:24:55 -0200 |
To: |
Sandy Klein sends: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/02/westminster-dog-show-may-not-love-them-but-nabokov-did-dachshunds-adored-companion with the title: "Westminster dog show may not love them, but Nabokov did: Dachshunds, adored companions to writers and artists" by Alexander Nazaryan.
JM: In the article about the Westminster dog show there's a quote from "Speak, Memory," in which Vlladimir Nabokov describes, among other issues, his mother's dachs, Box[...] and observes that he "...is so old and thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside.” Soon afterwards Anton Chekhov's dachshunds, Quinine and Bromine., are mentioned but there's no reference to the blood-connection between Box and one of Chekhov's dogs (I think this story is told in Nabokov's memoirs).
Alexander Nazaryan observes that "perhaps because of their distinctive personalities, dachshunds often appear in fiction: from the “dropsical dackel” of a neighbor spotted by Humbert Humbert in 'Lolita' to Sherman McCoy’s Marshall, with whom he famously struggles in the opening of 'The Bonfire of the Vanities.' It must be said, unfortunately, that the titular character in Chekhov’s 'Lady with Lapdog' owns a Pomeranian."
French writer Victor Hugo's grandson once tried to "wed" his dackel, named "Lolita," to Pablo Picasso's guest-dog, "Lump".* Although I'd forgotten all about "Lolita" and a neighbor's "dropsical dackel," I decided to investigate more the abundant references I remembered from "Ada."
I hadn't noticed before that a dachshund is closely associated to Lucette.** nor that there was a reference to Chekhov in the same paragraph in which Marina's restless dackel makes one of his appearances*** - and the context of Van's confession of his "dackelophobia."# among other unexpected connections...
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* - "Lolita" and "Lump" must have met in 1957. Cf. David Douglas Duncan's "Lump the Dog who ate a Picasso" Ed.Thames and Hudson,2006.
(quote p.62-63: "Silversmith François Hugo, grandson of Victor, arrived with two massive Picasso-designed platters, his wife and a friend - and his svelte lady dachshund, Lolita. Asked by Picasso whether Lump had ever been married, I replied "No!" Hugo responded to the same query about Lolita - "No!". The next platter delivery was delayed to coincide with their marriage. She returned jewel-eyed, with dish-doily wedding necklace around her throat, Picasso their helpful godfather. To no avail. Lum and Lolita remained childless." .
** "Lucette was rocking the glum dackel, or looking up at an imaginary woodpecker, or with various pretty contortions unhurriedly mounting the gray-looped board and swinging gently and gingerly as if never having done it yet, while idiot Dack barked at the locked pavilion door. She increased her momentum..."
" She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an unanalyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful torpor. She saw a pair of new vair-furred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a half-tom wreath."
Strangely it's doomed Greg who mentions Ada's film, marriage, Lucette's dackel and a death by drowning:" ‘Oh, that would be terrible, I declare — to switch on the dorotelly, and suddenly see her. Like a drowning man seeing his whole past, and the trees, and the flowers, and the wreathed dachshund. She must have been terribly affected by her mother’s terrible death.’ "
*** - "The corridor was dark, somewhere the dachshund was barking ecstatically...the so-called ‘baronial barn,’ ...was on fire. Fifty cows would have been without hay and Larivière without her midday coffee cream had it happened later in the season. Van felt slighted. They’ve all gone and left me behind, as old Fierce mumbles at the end of the Cherry Orchard (Marina was an adequate Mme Ranevski)...Uncle Dan, a cigar in his teeth, and kerchiefed Marina with Dack in her clutch deriding the watchdogs, were in the process of setting out between raised arms and swinging lanterns in the runabout "
# - "The dog came in, turned up a brimming brown eye Vanward, toddled up to the window, looked at the rain like a little person, and returned to his filthy cushion in the next room.
‘I could never stand that breed,’ remarked Van. ‘Dackelophobia.’ ‘But girls — do you like girls, Van, do you have many girls? You are not a pederast, like your poor uncle, are you?"
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