Hello, Don
How wonderful to learn that "Torquated" means "ring
necked" and the word pheasant came from Phasianus colchis and places
the bird in Georgia and Black sea. I had a hard time with a
Baron that metamorphosed into "Jupiter Olorinus" in "Ada", until I
reached, with Van Veen, the "Three Swans" in Geneva, with its
upgraded mural where, instead of Leda, there was a painting of three eggs
ready to hatch Helen of Troy, Castor and Polux...
Just to keep on practicing with the English
language and Nabokov, I applied myself to an anthology of "accidental
assaults upon our language" ( Richard Lederer's collection of bloomers,
blunders, malapropisms, grammatical gaffes, gibberish, student howlers and
bloopers), where I found something about pheasants and Russia:
' While one student reminisced, "Each
Thanksgiving it is a tradition for my family to shoot peasants", another
observed, " In nineteenth century Russia, the pheasants led horrible lives".
Pertinent to certain themes here discussed we
find, in relation to CK, King Charles II and King Alphin: "
The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of
his father, but a president isn't";
Concerning RLS's influence on JS and his
physical complaints: "The human brain has more convulsions than found
in other mammals".And..."Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries,
vanes and caterpillars"
There is even a question similar
to Shakespeare and authorship, but concerning a Greek: " Actually,
Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name".
This seems to settle it! Before finding this gem I
had to rely on Kinbote according to whom Harfar Baron of Shalksbore was "a phenomenally endowed
brute" -" whose family name, "knave's farm", is the most probable
derivation of "Shakespeare" (note to lines 433-434, page
208)
Sunday greetings,
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 7:31
PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Torquated pheasant in
"Pale Fire"