Chicken Sandwich
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2010
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- Russian
- Home Country
- Russian Federation
- Current Location
- Netherlands
The only definite sexual events that I can remember as having occurred before my thirteenth birthday (that is, before I first saw my little Annabel) were: a solemn, decorous and purely theoretical talk about pubertal surprises in the rose garden of the school with an American kid, the son of a then celebrated motion-picture actress whom he seldom saw in the three-dimensional world; and some interesting reactions on the part of my organism to certain photographs, pearl and umbra, with infinitely soft partings, in Pichon’s sumptuous Le Beaute Humaine that that I had filched from under a mountain of marble-bound Graphics in the hotel library.
From Lolita.
My question concerns the boldfaced part. I have looked up all of the words, but I'm still not sure about the interpretation of this part of the sentence.
1) Considering that he's talking about the woman/women in the photograph, does "parting" mean "the line on your head made by dividing your hair with a comb" (Longman)? I find it a bit odd, because how can that part of your head be "infinitely soft"?
2) What does "pearl and umbra" mean? Does "pearl" describe the person(s) in the photograph and "umbra" the particular lighting of the photograph?
Thank you in advance.