Mike M writes:
In March 2012 Jansy assembled references to Telluride, tellurian etc. There's also one in 'Time and Ebb', which I saw quoted in Eric Naiman's book, page 91. The complete sentence from T & E:
"More than other generations, they tended to overlook outstanding men, leaving to us the honor of discovering their classics (thus Richard Sinatra remained, while he lived, an anonymous "ranger" dreaming under a Telluride pine or reading his prodigious verse to the squirrels of San Isabel Forest, whereas everybody knew another Sinatra, a minor writer, also of Oriental descent)."
Despite my devotion to the significance of the Shakespeare authorship issue to Nabokov I won't mention it in relation to this passage, obvious though it is -- a minor poet taking the limelight while an anonymous purveyor of prodigious verse is in the shadows (ok, I did mention it). Actually, it becomes unavoidable, so scratch that.
Was there a Richard Sinatra of note around 1944? There was a nine year old boy of that name, who became a fairly well-known actor in later years. He was the son of Ray Sinatra, a bandleader and musical arranger for Mario Lanza. You won't want to miss this picture of Ray and the guys http://www.oldbike.eu/museum/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ray-sinatra-cycling-orchestra.jpg. Ray was Frank Sinatra's cousin. I'm going to assume that Richard 'stands for' Ray, the Sinatra whom everybody knew being Frank.
What about the "anonymous 'ranger' dreaming under a Telluride pine"? At a guess, that refers to The Lone Ranger, anonymous because he was always masked. Originally, before the Lone Ranger occurred to me, I thought ranger being framed in inverted commas suggested that it was some kind of abbreviation, 'arranger' perhaps, because of what I saw as the Shakespeare connection; Shakespeare is reported to have corrected and modified plays. I still think that's relevant, as a covert meaning.
Those of a certain age will remember that the theme music for the Lone Ranger was an excerpt from Rossini's William Tell overture, hence [William] Tell-uride pine (Switzerland forests, freedom fighter, no Tonto however). William is almost invariably a Shakespeare clue, supplementary in this instance.
The prodigious verse speaks for itself, but who were the audience of squirrels, and why San Isabel Forest? (Why San and not Santa, for that matter?).
Straight after the quotation from Time and Ebb, Naiman writes:
"A bit of doggerel in Lolita is perhaps the closest Nabokov comes to decoding the meaning of the squirrel:
'I recalled the rather charming nonsense verse I used to write her when she was a child: "nonsense," she
used to say mockingly, "is correct."
The Squirl and his Squirrel, the Rabs and their Rabbits
Have certain obscure and peculiar habits.
Male hummingbirds make the most exquisite rockets.
The snake when he walks holds his hands in his pockets. . .' "
Humbert calls it nonsense verse, and Lolita responds "nonsense [she used to say mockingly] is correct". Which can be read two ways: the straightforward meaning, that yes, it really is nonsense.......... or that non-sense is in this instance, correct, i.e. a genuine representation of the truth.
Naiman's conclusion is that the squirrel is Nabokov's "symbol of poetry". The Squirl is here, I think, Shakespeare. We have the Squirl (masculine) and the Squirrel (perhaps feminine, or diminutive), the Rab family & their offspring of rabbits, but the latter are unimportant here. Note "his" squirrel, they are a pair. (There is another possibility for the Squirl/Squirrel combination which would be too space-consuming to develop here, but it relates to the kinship relationship between the two adult Sinatras).
Returning to the audience of squirrels in San Isabel Forest, and bearing Shakespeare in mind, they could be his lesser acolyte poets, or his audience at court, hanging on every sonnet, or both. San Isabel Forest (caveat lector). It's a real place. San (saint, a revered person) represents Queen (ditto, but a masculine Queen, San not Santa, married to her nation); Isabel is Elizabeth, the names are equivalent in Spanish (Isabella, also a single-minded Renaissance monarch) and English, both deriving from the biblical Elisheva; Forest sounds like First. San Isabel Forest = Queen Elizabeth First. Shakespeare's admirers at court, Elizabeth's courtiers & ladies are in this case the squirrels, therefore Squirrel did not have one meaning exclusively, although it did relate to poetry in some guise.
Reviewing the relevant passage: "reading his prodigious verse to the squirrels of San Isabel Forest, whereas everybody knew another Sinatra, a minor writer, also of Oriental descent)."
Oriental probably has some covert meaning in Nabokov, but failing that, I feel obliged to note that Edward de Vere 17th earl of Oxford hailed from Essex, east-Saxon, the 'oriental' part of England. Like Jonson's La-foole.
Below are Jansy's original selections, expanded slightly in one case. 1(a) from Ada has 'decapitated Tellurians'; whether this relates to William Tell failing to impale his son in the head with an arrow, I have no idea. Ada is very tough going. 1(b) has the Opera House in Telluride, which is consistent with Rossini's very long opera (I used to have the LPs) of William Tell. I wonder whether Nabokov was playing with Telluride, or William Tell-u-Ride-of-the-Valkyries, the "thunderous German musical dramas". In 2, tellurian means what it says, which makes a change.
1.ADA (a): Marina's "Man-made objects lost their significance or grew monstrous connotations; clothes hangers were really the shoulders of decapitated Tellurians, the folds of a blanket she had kicked off her bed looked back at her mournfully with a stye on one drooping eyelid and dreary reproof in the limp twist of a livid lip."
(b)Van's: "What a soprano Cora had been! Demon took Van to the world-famous Opera House in Telluride in West Colorado and there he enjoyed (and sometimes detested) the greatest international shows - English blank-verse plays, French tragedies in rhymed couplets, thunderous German musical dramas with giants and magicians and a defecating white horse..."
2. RLSK: Clare Bishop: " She had no special intention of being happy or of making Sebastian happy... it was merely a matter of naturally accepting life with Sebastian because life without him was less imaginable than a tellurian's camping-tent on a mountain in the moon..."
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