Subject
Queries re ADA: 1)art, science and incest 2) anthemion
Date
Body
Your editor begs assistance:
1) I lost my note card and can't find where the word "anthemion" occurs in
ADA. HELP?
2) On p. 436 of ADA (original hardback ed.; Part II, chptr 10) Demon says:
"If I could write,... I would describe, ... how passionately, how
incandescently, how incestuously -- c'est le mot -- art and science meet
in an insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet." He goes
onto illustrate how Ada & Lucette have (in the name of scientific
accuracy) noted an error in a Bosch butterfly rendition; he maintains that
the artist was simply amusing himself, "crossbreeding causual fancies,"
i.e. art.
OK, the incestuous insect in the ducal thicket of art&science is easy BUT
what about the thrush? (And the thistle?). Why a THRUSH? If it is just a
matter of a ceature being both a matter of beauty and scientific study,
any bird would have done. VN must have chosen the thrush for some reason.
I don't see it as an incest-related anagram. Or am I missing something?
Nor does the scientific name Turdus (philomelos - if it is the
European Song Thrush)suggest anything (relevant). Nor does
the Russian name Drozd.
Does "thistle" help any?
And I'm not too sure about that "ducal bosquet" either. Ducal?
Shakespeare?
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
1) I lost my note card and can't find where the word "anthemion" occurs in
ADA. HELP?
2) On p. 436 of ADA (original hardback ed.; Part II, chptr 10) Demon says:
"If I could write,... I would describe, ... how passionately, how
incandescently, how incestuously -- c'est le mot -- art and science meet
in an insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet." He goes
onto illustrate how Ada & Lucette have (in the name of scientific
accuracy) noted an error in a Bosch butterfly rendition; he maintains that
the artist was simply amusing himself, "crossbreeding causual fancies,"
i.e. art.
OK, the incestuous insect in the ducal thicket of art&science is easy BUT
what about the thrush? (And the thistle?). Why a THRUSH? If it is just a
matter of a ceature being both a matter of beauty and scientific study,
any bird would have done. VN must have chosen the thrush for some reason.
I don't see it as an incest-related anagram. Or am I missing something?
Nor does the scientific name Turdus (philomelos - if it is the
European Song Thrush)suggest anything (relevant). Nor does
the Russian name Drozd.
Does "thistle" help any?
And I'm not too sure about that "ducal bosquet" either. Ducal?
Shakespeare?
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618