Matt Roth thanks "Dieter
Zimmer for this very useful annotation on McDiarmid and others. One question:
how can we assume that "Nabokov's source probably was a book by Robert Scott
Fittis... Do we know that he used this book for other information? Google Books
shows that there are many references to McDiarmid and "incoherent transactions,"
in Southey but also in works by other writers."
Jerry Friedman asks
JM: "Has anything really changed now you know that the first quotation
there is from SK-B and only the part starting with "PF" is from JF?". He
used this example as a confirmation that we are often a prey to
"incoherent transactions"...
JM: Thanks to JF for
his correction: I must have confused messages and authors in
the midst of a wealth of quotes
and interspersed answers. I'm relieved to see that one
may civilly correct misquotes here. JF added[ concerning: if the invented "Lallans" reappeared
in another guise in VN's later "Transparent Things"]: " I'm not
sure what you have in mind. "Lallans" is a Scots pronunciation of
"Lowlands" and can mean Lowland Scots. The Lallans "invented" by "Hugh Mac
Diarmid" was an attempt at making Scots into a literary language. Thus it
was far less invented than Zemblan--more like a mirror image of
Lingo-Grande...By the way, if Angus
McDiarmid was a Gaelic-speaking ghillie, he was from the Highlands, not the
Lowlands."
JM: As for "Lallans" I was
considering Kinbote's whimsical appropriation, not
Hugh's attempt to make Scots into literary language,or
the pronunciation of "Lowlands" as "Lallans".
In English, not only in French, we get "lallition"
( and "laleo", in Spanish) so, with all the other words related to
echolalic lulling double-Ls valued by VN, I thought that
the idea of language's original baby-babbling would have
appealed to him. I'm still in doubt about what he meant by "my Lalage" in
relation to his best-selling novel.
Unfortunately I read German very slowly and this is why
I had not yet reached Dieter Zimmer's comments in his thick and rich
"Anhang" discussing issues related to the translation of Shade's poem,
documentation focusing VN correspondence about PF, DZ's own
annotations and timelines.
The Rowohlt 2008 edidion gave me such pleasure
by simply looking at it that I let serious work lag
behind...
I hope the appended contributions to F.F are soon
translated into English.
BTW: my recollection of Nabokov's
"rolled words" was incorrect: he uses this image to describe a
sensuous response to his native language, trying to
suppress anemic stereotypes (birches and
roses!), encountered in Russian elegiac poems. By this he is
trying to achieve an estrangement-effect, almost
like the task of "versipeling" his own works from English
into Russian and vice-versa.
In chapter 11, (SM) VN describes a
youthful epiphany from watching the
rain through stained-glass windows. The image of a drop
weighing down a leaf he also mentioned here
and reappears at least twice, particularly in
TRLSK, when it acquires a tone of deep loss.
In Chapter 11 VN also returns to the theme of
Sebastian Knight's style and moods derived from his ability
to entertain various trains of thought simultaneously. These are some of
the components of VN's "water-mark", elements
which reappear like the inter-textual travels of a lorgnon or the
solitary (unhappy) glove, often to bear witness to "cosmic
synchronicity", ie, tuning in to activate, through
words, a fluttering pair of butterfly wings ( for
example) together with lashes and leaves, mineral
shimmers and human flutterings all over the globe. A quantic
"literary butterfly effect"...