Subject
SIGNS: Some responses (the name Rebecca, numbers, beach plums)
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Jerry Friedman sends responses to various issues that have surfaced in
our discussion:
--- On Thu, 5/1/08, Don wrote:
[Is Rebecca a Jewish name?]
> Probably. "From the Hebrew name רִבְקָה
> (Rivqah), possibly meaning 'a
> snare' in Hebrew, or perhaps derived from an Aramaic
> name. This was the
> name of the wife of Isaac and the mother of Esau and Jacob
> in the Old Testament," says Google.
Hm, what does she have to with Isaac the Prince? Should we
make up a story where young Isaac moved to America after the
young woman who should have married him married a relative of
the famous rabbi?
A search of the Russian Wikipedia suggests that Rebekka is not
a common name for Gentile Russians.
On the other hand, Boris is. "Rebecca Borisovna" might suggest
the kind of non-religious Jewish environment that our couple
seems to belong to.
Barrie Karp wrote:
> One of the mysteries of the story: Why was the mother so sure she knew
> why the caller was calling the wrong number ("I will tell you what you
> are doing")
As Alexander Dolinin wrote in his essay at Zembla, the girl dialed
6 instead of 0. The mother shouldn't have been so sure--it seems
likelier that the girl misread a handwritten 0 than that she
misinterpreted a spoken "oh", even in those days when the first
two digits of phone numbers were given as letters, "GArfield-1
2-3-2-3". But it's an indirect way of saying "6 instead of 0"
that, as Dolinin remarks, requires a little decoding on the
reader's part.
> and what is the significance, to those who suffer from referential
mania, > of "you are turning the letter O instead of zero"?
Not a zero, as Jansy said. Dolinin relates it to various things.
Was it someone here who said that if the third call was the same
mistake, it would make 666?
Speaking of referential mania, has anyone mentioned that "Charles"
comes from a word for "man", and the diminutive may suggest a
young man or boy--maybe a sign of the son?
On another point, what's the story with "beech plum"? Alexander
Dolinin says all editions have "beech", but Sandy Drescher says
(also at Zembla) that the /New Yorker/ had the "correct" beach.
Which account is right? And if Nabokov had meant the spelling
error (which as Sandy Drescher said is consistent with "spelled
out"), would he really not have included a note directing the
magazine not to correct it?
Was beach-plum jelly really available in the U.S. in those days?
I've never heard of it for sale. Is its presence a sign that
the couple spent more than they could afford on their present?
And in a story that invites the reader to feel compassion so
many times, spare a thought for the jelly-maker's employee forced
to misspell a word on a label and for the unhappy-sounding girl
forced to misdial twice, all to arrange some signs and symbols!
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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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
our discussion:
--- On Thu, 5/1/08, Don wrote:
[Is Rebecca a Jewish name?]
> Probably. "From the Hebrew name רִבְקָה
> (Rivqah), possibly meaning 'a
> snare' in Hebrew, or perhaps derived from an Aramaic
> name. This was the
> name of the wife of Isaac and the mother of Esau and Jacob
> in the Old Testament," says Google.
Hm, what does she have to with Isaac the Prince? Should we
make up a story where young Isaac moved to America after the
young woman who should have married him married a relative of
the famous rabbi?
A search of the Russian Wikipedia suggests that Rebekka is not
a common name for Gentile Russians.
On the other hand, Boris is. "Rebecca Borisovna" might suggest
the kind of non-religious Jewish environment that our couple
seems to belong to.
Barrie Karp wrote:
> One of the mysteries of the story: Why was the mother so sure she knew
> why the caller was calling the wrong number ("I will tell you what you
> are doing")
As Alexander Dolinin wrote in his essay at Zembla, the girl dialed
6 instead of 0. The mother shouldn't have been so sure--it seems
likelier that the girl misread a handwritten 0 than that she
misinterpreted a spoken "oh", even in those days when the first
two digits of phone numbers were given as letters, "GArfield-1
2-3-2-3". But it's an indirect way of saying "6 instead of 0"
that, as Dolinin remarks, requires a little decoding on the
reader's part.
> and what is the significance, to those who suffer from referential
mania, > of "you are turning the letter O instead of zero"?
Not a zero, as Jansy said. Dolinin relates it to various things.
Was it someone here who said that if the third call was the same
mistake, it would make 666?
Speaking of referential mania, has anyone mentioned that "Charles"
comes from a word for "man", and the diminutive may suggest a
young man or boy--maybe a sign of the son?
On another point, what's the story with "beech plum"? Alexander
Dolinin says all editions have "beech", but Sandy Drescher says
(also at Zembla) that the /New Yorker/ had the "correct" beach.
Which account is right? And if Nabokov had meant the spelling
error (which as Sandy Drescher said is consistent with "spelled
out"), would he really not have included a note directing the
magazine not to correct it?
Was beach-plum jelly really available in the U.S. in those days?
I've never heard of it for sale. Is its presence a sign that
the couple spent more than they could afford on their present?
And in a story that invites the reader to feel compassion so
many times, spare a thought for the jelly-maker's employee forced
to misspell a word on a label and for the unhappy-sounding girl
forced to misdial twice, all to arrange some signs and symbols!
Jerry Friedman
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