Robert Roper: "What was the Shelleyan effect
upon VN of encountering the American sublime, in the form of the Rockies and
other Western landscapes he cherished first for their butterflies?"
Jansy Mello: The only
novelistic reference that I remember relates to "Lolita" (but
Quilty intervened and, besides, should we trust HH?).
"I remember as a child in Europe gloating over a map of
North America that had "Appalachian Mountains" boldly running from Alabama up to
New Brunswick, so that the whole region they spanned — Tennessee, the Virginias,
Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, appeared to my
imagination as a gigantic Switzerland or even Tibet, all mountain, glorious
diamond peak upon peak, giant conifers, le montagnard émigré in his bear skin
glory, and Felis tigris goldsmithi, and Red Indians under the catalpas. That it
all boiled down to a measly suburban lawn and a smoking garbage incinerator, was
appalling. Farewell, Appalachia! Leaving it, we crossed Ohio, the three states
beginning with "I," and Nebraska — ah, that first whiff of the
West!"
It would be nice to read VN's testimonies about the "American
sublime" that were unrelated to his passion for butterflies.*
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Cf. Nabokov's Summer Trips to the West, 1941-1953
...............................................................................................
(2) In his letter 279 (written in August 14,1956) Nabokov
writes to Wilson that "we moved on to higher altitudes
in Wyoming and Montana. Incidentally, in one of his letters to Fliess the
Viennese Sage mentions a young patient who masturbated in the w.c of the
Interlaken hotel in a special contracted position so as to be able to glimpse (now comes the Viennese Sage's
curative explanation) the Jungfrau. He should have been a young Frenchman
in a Wyoming motel with a view of the Tetons."
(Jungfrau in German means "virgin". Wiki informs that "The
Teton Range (the Rocky Mountains in North America)...on the Wyoming side of the
state's border with Idaho, just south of Yellowstone National Park....Early French voyageurs gave the name "les Trois Tétons" (the
three breasts)." (copied from VN-L
archives)
