Subject
Re: QUERY: J Mello re: Fiume, Riviera, "flumine"
From
Date
Body
John Rea wrote: I have said elsewhere that our author treats language as a game with secret rules: and on top of that he cheats... Thus, the word "fiume" is the basic italian word for "river". This is what makes the consenting reader equate it in meaning with Spanish "rio": and he will have quickly followed this line of logic by associating "alto" = "tall"... This leads the reader quickly to associaate, "rio grande" with "ri'alto", incorporating the [fi] of "fiume' in this fluminous and fulminous brew. These word associations are at the basis of a game called by linguists,"folk etymology" ... If my words perish on line, please send a copy to ...any Dutch Brazilians, an ethnic group with which I claim an affiliation based on a German preacher who ended up in Flatbush.
JM: John Rea forgot to add Yalta to the full fulminous fluminous flight that took-off from Fialta to end up in Rio Grande ( with its northern flock of foreign preachers). In short, fiumi (river in Italian) is unrelated to Fiume, Yalta and Fialta to every (unconsenting) reader. So much for the tin-foil and shimmer... Btw, I read that the yellow car that crashed against a circus-truck in VN's novel was named "Icarus" only in its English translation (Tammi's "Problems of Nabokov's poetics" has yet to be consulted) - so it is as fictional as the city of Fialta and the novels in which it appears. Do I digress?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
JM: John Rea forgot to add Yalta to the full fulminous fluminous flight that took-off from Fialta to end up in Rio Grande ( with its northern flock of foreign preachers). In short, fiumi (river in Italian) is unrelated to Fiume, Yalta and Fialta to every (unconsenting) reader. So much for the tin-foil and shimmer... Btw, I read that the yellow car that crashed against a circus-truck in VN's novel was named "Icarus" only in its English translation (Tammi's "Problems of Nabokov's poetics" has yet to be consulted) - so it is as fictional as the city of Fialta and the novels in which it appears. Do I digress?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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