Re: PLONKS 5-11-2009

On Thu, 14 May 2009 23:56:29 +0200, Victor Sack wrote:

blake murphy <blakepmNOTTHIS@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

i had an english prof who talked about the first time he read 'lolita,' and
how he was (rightly) blown away. then he found out english was not
nabokov's native tongue and got *really* depressed.

Except it was not quite so simple in Nabokov's case. He was raised by
English and French governesses and was trilingual. He learnt to read
and write in English earlier than in Russian. The French governess
briefly appearing in the beginning of _The Luzhin Defence_ is actually
Nabokov's own. She is much fuller described in the Mademoiselle O.
chapter of the English and Russian versions of his memoirs.

Yet, in Nabokov's own words, it was more difficult for him than for
anyone else to come to terms with English as his literary language. He
invokes Joseph Conrad, saying that he never left any trace in his native
Polish literature and, writing in his chosen language (English),
artfully used ready-made formulas. Nobokov, on the other hand, was
already an established - great - Russian writer by the time he decided
to start writing in English. It is more difficult to leave behind one's
own, personal, tamed - as distinct from generic - literary language and
to have to invent, build, tame and polish a new one.


i just remember this:

Nabokov concluded the afterword with a reference to his beloved first
language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States
in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be
anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my
untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate
brand of English".

maybe it was the 'second-rate' part that got to my professor.

ObFood: It is said that when Nabokov was writing _Bend Sinister_, his
second English novel, with his wife being away, he was living entirely
on Roquefort and pineaple.

Victor

i've always wanted to try humbert's 'pin' :

'gin and pineapple juice, my favorite mixture, always double my energy.'

i have had vodka and pineapple, which tastes about like you'd expect -
mostly like pineapple.

your pal,
blake
.

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