Subject
ADA's mulberry and burnberry
From
Date
Body
Dear Don, Boyd and List,
In the same way that I could not find any existing "burnberry" plant, I also
cannot find any true "shattal tree", variously identified by Nabokov
scholars as the Edenic Tree Knowledge ( of good and evil) . In the Old
Testament, though, there are two trees growing in the same place, at the
world´s axis: The tree of knowledge from whose forbidden fruit Adam and Even
ate and the other, a Tree of Life.
Dan instructed poor dribling Lucette that there can be no two simultaneous
twins but here we are confronted with those twin paradisical trees. There is
one, among many, interpretation that suggests that only after reaching the
first tree one might be able to perceive the other, which would then
represent another aspect of the same tree.
Undoubtedly Nabokov is a God in his own universe but I think he might also
be developping the twin-tree image of Genesis through his "shattal tree".
If the mulberry tree can be associated to the silk-worm, then we might
consider VN´s words on that respect. Ada, Vintage edition, page 95:
"That might have been true, but according to a later ( considerably later!)
version they were still in the tree, and still glowing, when Van removed the
silk thread of larva web from his lip...
(...)
- I refuse to share the ardor of your little canicule with an apple tree."
- " It is really the Tree of Knowledge - this specimen was imported last
summer...
_... "but I swear no apple trees grow in Iraq."
"Right, but that´s not a true apple tree."
( "Right and wrong", commented Ada, again much later (...) there was no
National Park in Iraq eighty years ago." " True," said Van. " And no
caterpillars bred on that tree in our orchard." " True, my lovely and
larveless." Natural history was past history by that time.)"
So we find, rightly or wrongly, a connection between the shattal tree and
the mulberry tree, that is later ( eighty years later, the difference in
time bt. Terra and Antiterra? ) dismissed.
And the burnberries are another invention. Why would they be bogberries (
or dog/god berries by their "transmongrelization" ) and not something else?
When Aqua plans her suicide she finds a gulch to gulch her pills and
" began placidly eating from her cupped palm the multicolored contents of
her handbag, like any Russian country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (
feasting on berries ) that she had just picked in the woods".
Could these iricollored pills be a kind of "burnberry", too?
She chose a dry place, a Californian chaparral "tangled brushwood" and not
a wet boggy place to die and there she "lay, as if buried prehistorically,
in a fetus-in-utero position..." ( pages 28/29)
I understand no Russian to know if "yagodami" ( !) means "berries" and if it
offers any special hint of something that elludes me.
Right and wrong? Good and Evil? Tree of Life?
Could yagodami point to any kind of existing burnberries that are also
bogberries?
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Boyd
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 7:05 PM
Subject: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
I think VN must be smiling on Terra at the thought of Don, with his rich
knowledge of natural history, imagining that burnberry is a real plant. It
is a
plant only in the other sense, "something deliberately placed so that its
discovery may deceive or mislead" (W3). But I am hardly surprised that it
seems
familiar to him: there are few who know ADA better.
VN provides a plausible etymology, from "burn" in the sense of brook, but it
is
invented as part of the berry motif, which itself pays homage to the drupes
and
berries and other fruit in the central panel of Bosch's Garden of Earthly
Delights; but "burnberry" in particular also glances toward the the hellish
right panel, with its lurid fires.
As for "bury or burn" at 9.09-10: it is quite pointedly an advance
transmutation
of the "burnberry" motif; the fact that it LOOKS different (two words,
different
parts of speech, different spelling) emphasizes the ingenuity of Nabokovian
motif-making and strengthens rather than weakens the link. To my judgment at
least "burn or bury" is much less pointedly part of the more diffuse "burn"
motif, associated especially with the Burning Barn, but also more generally
with the idea of the flames of desire. In that sense, perhaps it is close
enough to list under "burn" as well. Could you please add, Jeff (burn under
MOTIF and 9.09-10, and links both ways)? I would also add to the
Acknowledgments the name of the person who started this thread if s/he were
willing to discard anonymity.
And thanks for reading with such attention to detail, and curiosity. The
best
reward for the effort involved.
Brian Boyd
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Wed 2/23/2005 8:12 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: mulberry and burnberry
EDNOTE. I too skimmed through my fairly extensive botanical library without
finding "burnberry." Odd, it certainly seems familiar. I wonder if there is
a
similarly named Russian plant?
-------------------------------------------
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:07:38 -0000
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Following Boyd´s fascinating text on the "Inseparable Fates" chapter of his
"
Nabokov´s Ada" I came across once more a very complete and complex analysis
about the mulberry-soap reference.
Soon later I found " Lucete hides among the burnberry bushes" and has her
shorts
"stained with burnberry purple".
I remember Boyd explaining that a brook is a "burn" ( page 141) .
I have not been able to locate any "burnberry" amidst the botanical
references I
could acess. Are there indeed " burnberries" and "burnberry bushes" as real
plants?
If not, would those plants be an indirect way of introducing the "here we go
round the mulberry bush" theme?
If it happens to be so ( burnberry as another way of writing about
mulberry ) we
would once again find those curious exchanges bt word sounds in Nabokov...
Could any botanist in the list help ?
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
In the same way that I could not find any existing "burnberry" plant, I also
cannot find any true "shattal tree", variously identified by Nabokov
scholars as the Edenic Tree Knowledge ( of good and evil) . In the Old
Testament, though, there are two trees growing in the same place, at the
world´s axis: The tree of knowledge from whose forbidden fruit Adam and Even
ate and the other, a Tree of Life.
Dan instructed poor dribling Lucette that there can be no two simultaneous
twins but here we are confronted with those twin paradisical trees. There is
one, among many, interpretation that suggests that only after reaching the
first tree one might be able to perceive the other, which would then
represent another aspect of the same tree.
Undoubtedly Nabokov is a God in his own universe but I think he might also
be developping the twin-tree image of Genesis through his "shattal tree".
If the mulberry tree can be associated to the silk-worm, then we might
consider VN´s words on that respect. Ada, Vintage edition, page 95:
"That might have been true, but according to a later ( considerably later!)
version they were still in the tree, and still glowing, when Van removed the
silk thread of larva web from his lip...
(...)
- I refuse to share the ardor of your little canicule with an apple tree."
- " It is really the Tree of Knowledge - this specimen was imported last
summer...
_... "but I swear no apple trees grow in Iraq."
"Right, but that´s not a true apple tree."
( "Right and wrong", commented Ada, again much later (...) there was no
National Park in Iraq eighty years ago." " True," said Van. " And no
caterpillars bred on that tree in our orchard." " True, my lovely and
larveless." Natural history was past history by that time.)"
So we find, rightly or wrongly, a connection between the shattal tree and
the mulberry tree, that is later ( eighty years later, the difference in
time bt. Terra and Antiterra? ) dismissed.
And the burnberries are another invention. Why would they be bogberries (
or dog/god berries by their "transmongrelization" ) and not something else?
When Aqua plans her suicide she finds a gulch to gulch her pills and
" began placidly eating from her cupped palm the multicolored contents of
her handbag, like any Russian country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (
feasting on berries ) that she had just picked in the woods".
Could these iricollored pills be a kind of "burnberry", too?
She chose a dry place, a Californian chaparral "tangled brushwood" and not
a wet boggy place to die and there she "lay, as if buried prehistorically,
in a fetus-in-utero position..." ( pages 28/29)
I understand no Russian to know if "yagodami" ( !) means "berries" and if it
offers any special hint of something that elludes me.
Right and wrong? Good and Evil? Tree of Life?
Could yagodami point to any kind of existing burnberries that are also
bogberries?
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Boyd
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 7:05 PM
Subject: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
I think VN must be smiling on Terra at the thought of Don, with his rich
knowledge of natural history, imagining that burnberry is a real plant. It
is a
plant only in the other sense, "something deliberately placed so that its
discovery may deceive or mislead" (W3). But I am hardly surprised that it
seems
familiar to him: there are few who know ADA better.
VN provides a plausible etymology, from "burn" in the sense of brook, but it
is
invented as part of the berry motif, which itself pays homage to the drupes
and
berries and other fruit in the central panel of Bosch's Garden of Earthly
Delights; but "burnberry" in particular also glances toward the the hellish
right panel, with its lurid fires.
As for "bury or burn" at 9.09-10: it is quite pointedly an advance
transmutation
of the "burnberry" motif; the fact that it LOOKS different (two words,
different
parts of speech, different spelling) emphasizes the ingenuity of Nabokovian
motif-making and strengthens rather than weakens the link. To my judgment at
least "burn or bury" is much less pointedly part of the more diffuse "burn"
motif, associated especially with the Burning Barn, but also more generally
with the idea of the flames of desire. In that sense, perhaps it is close
enough to list under "burn" as well. Could you please add, Jeff (burn under
MOTIF and 9.09-10, and links both ways)? I would also add to the
Acknowledgments the name of the person who started this thread if s/he were
willing to discard anonymity.
And thanks for reading with such attention to detail, and curiosity. The
best
reward for the effort involved.
Brian Boyd
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Wed 2/23/2005 8:12 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fwd: mulberry and burnberry
EDNOTE. I too skimmed through my fairly extensive botanical library without
finding "burnberry." Odd, it certainly seems familiar. I wonder if there is
a
similarly named Russian plant?
-------------------------------------------
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:07:38 -0000
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Following Boyd´s fascinating text on the "Inseparable Fates" chapter of his
"
Nabokov´s Ada" I came across once more a very complete and complex analysis
about the mulberry-soap reference.
Soon later I found " Lucete hides among the burnberry bushes" and has her
shorts
"stained with burnberry purple".
I remember Boyd explaining that a brook is a "burn" ( page 141) .
I have not been able to locate any "burnberry" amidst the botanical
references I
could acess. Are there indeed " burnberries" and "burnberry bushes" as real
plants?
If not, would those plants be an indirect way of introducing the "here we go
round the mulberry bush" theme?
If it happens to be so ( burnberry as another way of writing about
mulberry ) we
would once again find those curious exchanges bt word sounds in Nabokov...
Could any botanist in the list help ?
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----