I’m about 1/2 way through with chapter 6. I’m moving right along. Slow and steady?
This is for you Eliana since I hear you have a penchant for hyperbole: “[Mademoiselle] is cold, she is frozen stiff, frozen ‘to the center of her brain’–for she soars with the wildest hyperbole when not tagging after the most pedestrian dictum” (page 99).
Interestingly, I don’t think Nabokov really liked Mademoiselle but he never speaks of her as if she was the evil, uptight school marm that she probably was. He gives her so much more depth and width (he he he) by discussing her motivations for crankiness and by allowing that he may have been naughtier with her than he should have been.
Chapter 5 really left me feeling an urgency to live and love the “now.” I felt very sad for Mademoiselle when she got pushed out by the other tutor who was mean to her. And I felt sad when Nabokov describes her old age in Switzerland with all the other past-prime nannies: “Huddled together in a constant seething of competitive reminiscences . . .” And then the metaphor in which he compares her to the aged swan that can’t get into the boat but he flaps and sputters around it anyway. It must be so terrible to become obsolete.
Syncopal and Eschewing
Syncopal = omission of letters or sounds from the middle of a word–bos’n for boatswain–I’m not sure I knew this was an English word. It is a very common technique in Spanish poetry. Often they use it to give double meanings to words.
Eschewing = avoid, shun
October 23, 2009 at 10:02 pm |
I also thought it was interesting how he dealt with Mlle. For someone he didn’t get along with he is quite mellow and respectful.
I feel obsolete already in my life. It is a terrible feeling.