I have a couple of
brief comments in reply to Carolyn and to Phil Wren. It is very unlikely that
VN came across "lemniscate" in either of the two dictionaries he used most:
Webster's New International, 2nd edition, unabridged; or the more
voluminous thirteen-tome OED. He would have had to be searching for it
specifically, or else to have happened upon the term by pure luck just when he
needed it but while he was searching for something quite different in the
neighborhood. A thesaurus is an even less likely source, since neither of
the two thesauri he used contains the word.
It is true that he
was not a mathematician, but, when he needed precise information, he researched
any number of subjects thoroughly. Nor (to return to a sensitive point) did he
display his skill with words gratuitously. Then again, the threshold of one's
need to search in dictionaries depends on the level and variety of his culture
and his vocabulary.
"Lemniscate" has
various meanings and various relatives. The two definitions that interest us are
1) the Bernoullian lemniscate and 2) the Boothian lemniscate which is a
generalization of the Bernoullian. I have the precise formulae for both but
shall not overload this posting with math. Suffice it to say that the
Bernoullian variety is neither simply an eight snoozing on its side nor the
infinity symbol. If one examines it carefully one will notice that part of the
central section (roughly from NE to SW) is thicker than the rest of the
figure. This may be interpreted as the zone where the track was thickened by
the imperfect overlap of two bicycle tires, which just might have been what
Nabokov intended to convey by his choice of the word. The skater's joy Phil
mentions is exemplified by a poem of my father's -- which I have
translated for my collection and shall post as soon as it has come out in
Aretè -- in which a deft blade can even design a flower. So maybe
we should set lemnicycling aside and instead
lemniskate.
Greetings,
DN