Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002745, Mon, 26 Jan 1998 10:49:16 -0800

Subject
Re: LD in France / CRB (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Gennady Barabtarlo <gragb@showme.missouri.edu>

³The White Raven² - perhaps, ³bielaia vorona²: Poe¹s bird russified (gramm.
gender feminine). ³B.V.² in Russian means rara avis, a person who stands
out of the range as odd, usually with a positive connotation (unlike the
English black sheep, in which the chromatic and thus semantic polarity is
reversed). ³Sebastian was a white crow among his crass classmates.²