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Fwd: RE: Brits and Brazilians?
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----- Forwarded message from shrewd@irk.ru -----
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:00:18 +0400
From: Sergey Karpukhin <shrewd@irk.ru>
Reply-To: Sergey Karpukhin <shrewd@irk.ru>
Subject: RE: Brits and Brazilians?
To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
Dear Brian and List,
Re "British and Brazilian":
The link might be aural and graphic rather than semantic: "Br. - Br..."
I think this was one of VN's (or Humbert's) favorite usages. In LOLITA, for
example, there are paired verbs beginning similarly: "lurched and lunged"
(p. 73 in Alfred Appel Jr.'s Annotated Edition), "grind and grope" (p. 116),
"plunged and played" (p. 117), "plunged and plashed" (p. 288).
Another, similar, kind of wordplay consists in pairing a noun with an
adjective, both of which begin with the same letters, usually two letters
("brutal brothers"). There are many instances of this in LOLITA as well.
The parenthesis may have been removed from the French translation because VN
felt it could be interpreted semantically and that was not what he had
intended.
Hope this helps,
Sergey
PS I'd like to take this opportunity to correct myself. After James Joyce's
death, his wife's dominant recollections of him were his turbulence and his
keen pleasure in sounds (perhaps something he may have shared with VN) (R.
Ellmann, JAMES JOYCE, p. 755), not "his musical talents" as I wrote in my
posting of March 11.
----- End forwarded message -----