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Re: TT persona : Hugh Person's name (fwd) (fwd)
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------------------ There is also a pun on the French word "resonne," which
can mean "re-ring" but also "resonate," which fits right in with something
vibrating through his whole system.
Wayne Jones
>> All of that is neither here nor there -- the important thing is what
>> freight Nabokov thought the word carried. And here I would point out a
>> passage in Lolita, where HH is ringing the doorbell of Lolita's Coalmont
>> home. "I pressed the bell button, it vibrated through my whole system.
>> _Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne_. From what depths this re-nonsense?"
>> (269 of AnnLo). Appel translates it as "Nobody. I re-rang the bell.
>> Re-nobody" -- and the word "re-nobody" occurs again when HH knocks at
>> Pavor manor. But in the context of the doorbell vibrating through HH's
>> system, I do think Nabokov is playing with the Latin elements of
>> personne/person in two ways: per can mean "through" and it can also mean
>> "thoroughly -- resoundingly, as it were -- so it works as a sort of
>> macaronic pun, and it shows, I think, that Nabokov had the idea of per +
>> sonare as part of his mental file card on "person." And then too of
>> course there is the French personne, which can mean either any person or
>> no person--or, as my dictionary puts it, "anyone, anybody (with vaguely
>> implied negation)." Sure sounds like Hugh to me.
>>
>> Mary
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D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L