S K-B to Tomasz:
"lost gloves"...widely worn and commonly misplaced in most
of VN's social-generational settings...gloves and hankies are regularly dropped
deliberately by female predators... Clare Bishop drops a glove _and_ leaves a
package behind in the Paris restaurant (RLSK) and Matt:
You are on a slippery slope to deny the "reality" of PF's The Book of Names ...
I claim that a book translatable into English as "The Book of Names"
is ...demonstrably factual! You'll see that a book of names can be (and
usually is) more than a straight list of names as mooted and
ridiculed...]
Matt to S
K-B:Shade says that CK is the author of "a remarkable book on
surnames," of which there is an English translation. ...VN probably had
something like Baring-Gould's "Family Names and Their Story" in mind, since that
is where he himself gleaned the names and/or backstories for names like
Lavender, Bretwit(z), Fyler, Campbell/Beauchamp, Lukin, and
Shalksbore/Shakespeare. "My name is Allen a Dale." Dale is often "dall"; Tindall
stands for Tyne-dale. Udall is the yew-dale. Sometimes Dale is corrupted into
"dow" or "daw," as Lindow or Lindaw... if yew is "tas" in your language, will it
make sense that it comes from Udall? The whole project seems sufficiently
unlikely to me...
JM: I just found a popular article on
Homer and Darwin(Cf. Jonathan Gottschall, "The Rape of Troy:
Evolution, Violence and the World of Homer"). Apparently warriors were more
intent in impregnating women ( they were a scarce item then) in order to
garantee their biological immortality than being turned into dead
immortal heroes. Helen had no need to drop
gloves, hankies and panties.
Gloves make their appearance in Bend Sinister,
after Krug looses one while in mourning and, much
later, drops the other close to a bridge. As Kinbote states, like
"reality"... "happy" is something extremely subjective. One of our sillier
Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is
happy.. I would follow the itinerary of VN's gloves along
his work as intently as he pursues a comb or a lorgnon all through
Anna Karenin to The Lady and the Lapdog, aso, while providing
us with amusing adventures and critical
views.
And I agree with you, "a book of names can be more than
a straight list of names", considering examples of name-fetish* and a lot more
besides that: L’if...The yew in French. It is curious that the Zemblan word for the
weeping willow is also "if" (the yew
is tas) - i.e:
perhaps- potato- peut-etre-God. Or in yew-wye
...tas-...Udall? (help!!!!)
...................................................................................................................
*-In a volume of the Young People's Encyclopedia[...]
A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover
this "Haze, Dolores" (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of
roses — a fairy princess between her two maids of honor. I am trying to analyze
the spine-thrill of delight it gives me, this name among all those
others.
.