While I was reviewing a group of satires on Marlowe's
original poem about a passionate shepherd, I came to Peter de Vries's more
recent "Bacchanal," (1959), with his generic reference to "a woman out of
Botticelli."* Keeping in mind Nabokov's passion for detail, I
decided to obtain an overview about his alusions to Botticelli.
My list is not exhaustive, but I think that, in the
end, I managed to reach an interesting tidbit.
BEND SINISTER:
"Her skin was so
tender that if you merely looked at it a rosy spot would appear. The uncommon
cold of a Botticellian angel tinged her nostrils with pink and suffused her
upperlip — you know, when the rims of her lips merge with the skin. She proved
to be a kitchen wench too — but in the kitchen of a vegetarian."
(Krug on Ember)
Vladimir Nabokov And the Art of
Painting - Gerard De Vries, Donald Barton Johnson, Liana Ashenden - 2006 -
Art
" In Look at the Harlequins the
narrator writes that "[t]he mad scholar in Esmeralda and Her
Parandus wreathes Boticelli and Shakespeare together by having Primavera end as
Ophelia with all her flowers" (LartH 162)" , a reference to the rigmarole
on Hamlet in Bend Sinister.
"Inspite of being labeled a post-modern by
a majority of analysts, Nabokov preferred the era of the Great Masters. Like
Proust, he never erased from his interior canvas Botticelli, El Greco, Rembrandt, Jan Van Eyck..." The
Sublime Artists Studio - Nabokov and Painting (Northwestern University
Press)
Sandro Botticelli and Hazel Shade (The
Nabokovian 49,2002, p.12-23) (still unchecked by
me)
Brian Boyd - ADA annotations: "At the same
time, Nabokov, who in Ada often couples Proust and Joyce (see I.1: 8-9, I.27:
169.33), echoes the painting of The Bath of the Nymph which Joyce associates
with Molly's infidelity to Bloom in Ulysses (see 13.25n.).The relationship with
Proust is particularly significant. First, the link between one of the novel's
women and an old master work is also an echo of Proust. Like Marina, Odette
is an actress, and both are explicitly associated later by Marina's revulsion
from the obscene and invented Cattleya Hawkmoth, a playful echo of the Cattleya
orchid that becomes a symbol of passion and (as "faire cattleya") a code-word
for lovemaking for Odette and Swann. (Indeed Nabokov drew a Cattleya orchid for
the cover of the original Penguin paperback of Ada.) Just as Demon sees his
Marina in terms of a Parmigianino sketch, so Swann sees his Odette in terms of a
Botticelli fresco in the Sistine Chapel. (Boyd 1985/2001: 286; see also
13.04-14.05n. above)
However, a careful re-reading of
Nabokov's novels, with an eye on "Botticelli," I realized that the particular
russet quality of his Venus, Primavera and other mythological creations,
struck Humbert Humbert aesthetically in a very original way. It's not only a
matter of painterly similarity and physical countours or skin coloring.
It's mainly a "blurred beauty" and the swollen, reddish mucosae lining
her palpebrae and lips, or
inflamed nostrils.
LOLITA: "She had been
crying after a routine row with her mother... she had one of those tender
complexions that after a good cry get all blurred and inflamed, and morbidly
alluring. I regretted keenly her mistake about my private aesthetics, for I
simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink, that raw rose about the lips, those
wet, matted eyelashes..."
....................................
"Curious:
although actually her looks had faded, I definitely realized, so hopelessly late
in the day, how much she looked — had always looked — like Botticelli's russet
Venus — the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty."
(chapter 29 of Part
II)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
* Peter De Vries (1910-1993),
"Bacchanal" (1959)
.
"Come live with me and be my love,"
He said, in
substance. "There's no vine
We will not pluck the clusters of,
Or grape
we will not turn to wine."
It's autumn of their second year.
Now he, in
seasonal pursuit,
With rich and modulated cheer,
Brings home the festive
purple fruit;
And she, by passion once demented
- That woman out of
Botticelli -
She brews and bottles, unfermented,
The stupid and abiding
jelly".