JF- "Rosa dos ventos" in English is a
"wind rose". Since the young Nabokov admired Housman, I feel obliged to mention
that some old ones had 12 rays instead of 16: "From far, from eve and
morning,/ And yon twelve-winded sky..." )
JM: I was expecting corrections from you,
SF, from SKB and CHW, about the "wind rose", since there are different
instruments being designated simultaneously.
Charles Watkins
wrote that "a gnomon in Euclid is an asymmetrical geometrical
figure, being a parallelogram from one corner of which a similar parallelogram
has been removed..."
I finally
located my "The Charting of the Oceans" by Peter Whitfield, with
ancient maps of Nova Zembla and artic expeditions, fantasy maps
and even one of the isle of Mitilene ( various word plays with Mitil, Lesbos,
methylène blue, Sappho and Pierre Louys are found in "ADA").
A
curious comment about Shackleton suggested to me a metaphorical
reading for his plight since he was so isolated that Wolrd War I was going
on and he had no information about it: his isolation connects
us with "circles" and "ivory/ivy towers", like those mentioned
in PF.
The least complicated compass I found represents an 8-point classical wind
system. Mediterranean sea-farers relied on the direction of
the winds instead of magnetic direction,
astro-navigation nor... who knows, H.G.Well' s "gravitrons"...
The eight or twelve winds were personified as faces around the edtes of
medieval and Renaissance maps ( page 7).
I was reminded of a blowing Boreas ( didn't check if it was indeed
Boreas) propelling Venus to the shore in Boticcelli's painting VN also wrote
about, mentioning either russet Lolita or Lucette.
The eight-point system names: Boreas, Caecias, Apeliotes, Eurus, Notus,
Lips, Zephyrus and Argestes. The author ( Whitfield) mentions that on the
third century BC the wind-rose was used "to underlay the earliest known written
aids to navigation - the pilot book or periplus". There is also a "wind compass", with 32
compass points which were used, instead of "degrees" until the nineteenth
century (page 81).
A "gnomon",
even if mounted on a roseate compass, is a different instrument altogether.
Charles Watkins
observed that the "gnomon" is a key word italicised on
the first page of Dubliners, which is no doubt
relevant. Although
the homeric Ulysses must have relied on
wind-roses, as would Vikings ( they also used a type of compass based
on the sun) I wonder if and how the Euclidean gnomon was used.
VN was strongly opposed to any
mythological parallel with Homer's Ulysses and Joyce's book, but I don't
know how many scholars endorse a similar point of view.
Jansy