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Re: scrotum - scratch
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Alexey Sklyarenko: The first three letters in scrotum are the same as in Screepatch and scratch. Cf. "a fiery irritation...which the weak, the adorable, the vuluptuous took advantage of to scratch and scratch and scratch scrumptiously (canteen cant). 'Sladko! (Sweet!)' Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species in Yukon." (Ada: 1.17) The fiddler (skrypach) in Pushkin's poem (see the full Russian text below) says in reply to the castrate's question what does he do when he is bored: "I scratch my testicles."
JM: I suppose that your research is mainly dedicated to "Ada. For the present collection of references, there is a variation which has not been spelled out by Nabokov ( I learned the Spanish word "cojones" from Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and, perhaps, this is one of the reasons why Nabokov refers to him with the wordplay on "balls, bells, bulls").
" Ada remembered, of course, mariposa, butterfly, and the names of two or three birds (listed in ornithological guides) such as paloma, pigeon, or grevol, hazel hen. Marina knew aroma and hombre, and an anatomical term with a ‘j’ hanging in the middle. In consequence, the table-talk consisted of long lumpy Spanish phrases..."
Ada I, ch.6
The descriptive power that may lie in the color and shape of a word, or in a succession of them, is often explored by modern advertisings. Nabokov's play with the double "Os" intermediated by another letter, as in "Ada," was used earlier in his short-story "A Guide do Berlin."
I go out in the flat gray light of early morning, an even stripe of fresh snow stretches along the upper side of each black pipe while up the interior slope at the very mouth of the pipe which is nearest to the turn of the tracks, the reflection of a still illumined tram sweeps up like bright-orange heat lightning. Today someone wrote "Otto" with his finger on the strip of virgin snow and I thought how beautifully that name, with its two soft o's flanking the pair of gentle consonants, suited the silent layer of snow upon that pipe with its two orifices and its tacit tunnel.
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JM: I suppose that your research is mainly dedicated to "Ada. For the present collection of references, there is a variation which has not been spelled out by Nabokov ( I learned the Spanish word "cojones" from Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and, perhaps, this is one of the reasons why Nabokov refers to him with the wordplay on "balls, bells, bulls").
" Ada remembered, of course, mariposa, butterfly, and the names of two or three birds (listed in ornithological guides) such as paloma, pigeon, or grevol, hazel hen. Marina knew aroma and hombre, and an anatomical term with a ‘j’ hanging in the middle. In consequence, the table-talk consisted of long lumpy Spanish phrases..."
Ada I, ch.6
The descriptive power that may lie in the color and shape of a word, or in a succession of them, is often explored by modern advertisings. Nabokov's play with the double "Os" intermediated by another letter, as in "Ada," was used earlier in his short-story "A Guide do Berlin."
I go out in the flat gray light of early morning, an even stripe of fresh snow stretches along the upper side of each black pipe while up the interior slope at the very mouth of the pipe which is nearest to the turn of the tracks, the reflection of a still illumined tram sweeps up like bright-orange heat lightning. Today someone wrote "Otto" with his finger on the strip of virgin snow and I thought how beautifully that name, with its two soft o's flanking the pair of gentle consonants, suited the silent layer of snow upon that pipe with its two orifices and its tacit tunnel.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/