A.Sklyarenko:"Updike's Chiron (I've
read it 23 years ago) is mentioned in Ada (1.21): emphatic
Miss Vertograd had noticed that she and giggling Verger... shared also a
spectacular skin disease that had been portrayed recently by a famous American
novelist in his Chiron. Vivian Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Chiron: doctor among centaurs: an allusion to Updike's best
novel.[ ] Since human brain resembles a walnut,
this quote seems relevant: the human brain can become the best torture
house of all those it has invented, established and used in millions of
years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling
creatures. (Ada, 1.3)
Jansy Mello: Thanks, AS for
the tip about the reference to Updike's Chiron in ADA, and the leap that
leads one from the horse to the bull (Taurus)
Wikipedia: "The Greek word kentauros is
generally regarded as of obscure origin The etymology from ken – tauros,
"piercing bull-stickers" was a uhemerist suggestion in Palaephatus'
rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων):
mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that
were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom.[19] Another possible related etymology can
be "bull-slayer".[20] Some[who?] say that the Greeks took the constellation of
Centaurus, and also its name "piercing bull", fromMesopotamia, where it
symbolized the god Baal who represents rain and fertility, fighting with and
piercing with his horns the demon Motwho represents the summer drought. In
Greece, the constellation of Centaurus was noted by Eudoxus of Cnidus in the
fourth century BC and by Aratus in the third century"
In your next posting, you mentioned that: "Pushkin
called Peter I velikiy Pyotr (Peter the Great). Ot velikogo do smeshnogo tol'ko
odin shag (it is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous)." This proverb
is quoted by Lev Kassil in his memoir essay on Mayakovski (Na kapitanskom
mostike, On the Captain's Bridge, 1934):"
Nabokov must have been aware of Pushkin's opinion
about Peter I and, perhaps, even of Sigmund Freud's familiarity
with the same sentence quoted in one of his examples about dream
interpretation.*
.................................................................................
* - Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). A General
Introduction to Psychoanalysis. 1920.Part Two: The Dream - VII. Manifest
Dream Content and Latent Dream Thought [www.bartleby.com/283/7.html -]
A sceptical patient has a longer dream, in which
certain people happen to tell her about my book concerning laughter and praise
it highly. Then something is mentioned about a certain“‘canal,’ perhaps another
book in which ‘canal’ occurs, or something else with the word ‘canal’ … she
doesn’t know … it is all confused.”
Now you will be
inclined to think that the element “canal” will evade interpretation because it
is so vague. You are right as to the supposed difficulty, but it is not
difficult because it is vague, but rather it is vague for a different reason,
the same reason which also makes the interpretation difficult. The dreamer can
think of nothing concerning the word canal, I naturally can think of nothing. A
little while later, as a matter of fact on the next day, she tells me that
something occurred to her that may perhaps be related to it, a joke that she has
heard. On a ship between Dover and Calais a well-known author is conversing with
an Englishman, who quoted the following proverb in a certain connection: “Du
sublime au ridicule, il n’y a qu’un pas.” The author answers, “Oui, le pas
de Calais,” with which he wishes to say that he finds France sublime and
England ridiculous. But the “Pas de Calais” is really a canal, namely, the
English Channel. Do I think that this idea has anything to do with the dream?
Certainly, I believe that it really gives the solution to the puzzling dream
fragments. Or can you doubt that this joke was already present in the dream, as
the unconscious factor of the element, “canal.” Can you take it for granted that
it was subsequently added to it? The idea testifies to the scepticism which is
concealed behind her obtrusive admiration, and the resistance is probably the
common reason for both phenomena, for the fact that the idea came so
hesitatingly and that the decisive element of the dream turned out to be so
vague. Kindly observe at this point the relation of the dream element to its
unconscious factor. It is like a small part of the unconscious, like an allusion
to it; through its isolation it became quite
unintelligible.