flaubert's parrot
"It is une petite levrette d'Italie: a small Italian greyhound bitch. Nabokov, who is exceedingly peremptory with all translators of Flaubert, renders this as whippet. Whether he is zoologically correct or not, he certainly loses the sex of the animal, which seems to me important..."
"The rising sun lit up the topmost stones of the Pyramid, and Flaubert, looking down at his feet, noticed a small business-card pinned in place. 'Humbert, Frotteur', it read, and gave a Rover address...
- Barnes is alluding to a comment made in Nabokov's Lectures on Literature. All the people I've consulted seem to agree that Barnes makes a good point.
"Isn't it, perhaps, a notable historical coincidence that the greatest European novelist of the 19th century should be introduced at the Pyramids to one of the 20th century's most notorious fictional characters? That Flaubert, still damp from skewering boys in Cairo bath-houses, should fall on the name of Nabokov's seducer of underage American childhood? And further, what is the profession of this single-barrelled version of Humbert Humbert? He is a frotteur. Literally, a French polisher; but also, the sort of sexual deviant who loves the rub of the crowd.
"...Perhaps Nabokov had read Flaubert's letters before writing Lolita."
- More information on Julian Barnes.
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