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.