PS to Gavriel Shapiro's "for Botticelli-related references and allusions in
Lolita, see The Sublime Artist's Studio, 46-47."
A good Samaritan helped me with the references found in
Gavriel Shapiro's book:
"In Lolita, when thinking of the title heroine, Humbert
speaks of "those wet, matted eyelashes," evidently
referring to Botticelli's Birth of Venus (...), which he names later in the
novel when comparing the girl to "Botticelli's russet Venus
- the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty"(...)
Humbert also points to "that tinge of
Botticellian pink" ( ... ) that is manifest in the Three
Graces in Primavera (...) In the Ur-Lolita novella,
The Enchanter (...), Nabokov speaks of "a priceless
original: sleeping girl, oil. Her face in its soft nest of curls, cattered here,
wadded together there, with those little fissures on her parched lips, and that
special crease in the eyelids over the barely joined lashes, had a russet,
roseate tint where the lighted cheek - whose Florentine outline was a smile in
itself - showed through" (..) The description reads like a curious
cross between Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Giorgine's Sleeping
Venus (...).// Finally, in Look at the Harlequins, his last
completed novel, Nabokov refers to Primavera directly. In his
letter,which contains the marriage proposal to Annette Blagovo, Vadim
Vadimovich, the bedridden protagonist of the novel, implores his addressee:"
Do not write... and when you come...please, if you do, wear,
in propitious sign, the Florentine hat that looks like a cluster of wild
flowers. I want you to celebrate your resemblance to the fifth girl from
left to right, the flower-decked blonde with the straaight nose and serious gray
eyes, in Botticelli's Primavera, an allegory of Spring, my love, my
allegory." (LATH 107)
Just like in the other example found in Bend
Sinister (Ember's nostrils), Botticelli is specially
connected to pink (a red-haired girl's flushed sensitive skin): this
is the "Botticellian pink," associated
with an inflamed, blurred, or matted coloring. Actually this
delicate smokiness corresponds to my recollection
of Botticelli's paintings Florence: the clear radiance lay
elsewhere, although it could still be felt.
Of course, I bring here a very subjective appraisal but, then,
how can we really be sure that the colors we see are like
the colors other people discern under the same
name?
Jean Holabird's "Vladimir Nabokov Alphabet in Color"
also strikes me as dimly lit, as in her rendering of the letter V (for
Vladimir?).
Nabokov himself (quoted by JH) states that he has "at last perfectly matched V with "Rose Quartz" in Maerr and
Paul's Dictionary of Color."
Perhaps V corresponds to a Botticellian pink, as it's
reproduced in the aforementioned dictionary?