A.S: Thanks for telling me about
the cognac Bras d'Or. ..Libra: if mirrored (say, in the clear waters of the
Mediterranian), the Latin letter L turns into the Cyrrilic letter Г
(corresponding to the Latin G) [...]There are more anagrams in ADA and in the
books to which there are allusions in ADA than it can seem. No one, except
Nabokov, seems to have noticed that Yashvin (Vronsky's friend in "Anna
Karenina") = vishnya (Russian for "cherry")[ ...]As to your suggestion that I
accept British pounds, I can accept everything, even Mongolian tugriks... It
will be a pity if I have to abandon the Nabokov studies because of financial
reasons.
JM: Language has its mysterious
workings and you are able to explore them to their full measure...
Today ( after receiving two off-list queries on
what I meant by "dic-droppings" or "uneveil and reveal"*) I started-off
again in a fantasy verbal word -deprived of your discipline and special
talents, I must confess.
VN once, in Ada, punned with the French
on egg-laying (pondre) and wrote: "Ponder the
egg". Ponder, indeed. Actually, "ponder" has a
lot of unfolding links to "pound" ( libra) if we associate weight,
measurements and balance= ponderation.
The British pound is represented by L ( I don't have an
option for this sign in my board)...
Fun to learn how, in "exchange", it turns upside
down or becomes a G. Besides, Labrador
and Labour party are laboriously elaborate enough...
I wonder, now, about Fet's labial labradores in the
insect world. Do they earn their full labor-rights?
About "dic-droppings" and Stan's advice ( " Remember
the vital importance of _absent_ clues " **), there's another coincidence: a
friend sent me excerpts of an interview with movie-director-producer Pedro
Almodóvar where he reminisced about his childhood in the Castille ( La Mancha).
His grandmother used to read the
letters her illiterate land-tilling peasants*** had received. She
inserted news and reminiscences that had not been written down. She wanted
to make the listener happy by inserting fictional (fictional by not being
written down in the letter, but that did happen in the listener's long
past) good things about a lost mother or absent son
****.
..........................................................................................................................................................................................
* For C.Kunin: "reveal" may lead to "veil" (unveil),
the cover that shy Truth needs to wake up arise in our Terran
world.
There are associative dangers. Stan knows everything
about these. "Veils" and "candles" are probably dependent of
the same sounds (vigil, reveil, awakening, reveillon...plus the
candles placed around a dead person in a wake).
**-btw: I hope the connection (I merely hinted at) bt.
Zemblan "sculpural coramens" and the Greek "skoramis" could be discerned in my
note?
*** - "lavoura" (crop) and "palavra"
(word) are connected! Pah! Lavra! Palaver..
****Almodóvar (in Portuguese, here)" Minha mãe preenchia as frestas das cartas - e lia para
as vizinhas aquilo que elas desejariam escutar.
E foi assim que, sem o
saber, foi minha mãe quem me ensinou a diferença entre a ficção, a mentira e a
realidade; e me mostrou como a realidade precisa da ficção (que não é o mesmo
que 'mentira' para ser mais completa, mais agradável e mais fácil de ser
vivida.” ie: "Mother filled in the chinks bt. words in a letter - she read
what they wanted to hear. In that way, unkowingly, my mother taught me the
difference between fiction, lie and reality and she let me learn how reality
need fiction ( which is not the same as a "lie" but fills in life and makes
turns it into something easier to endure." In relation to this
subject also Siri Hustvedt's novel ( she is married to Paul Auster) was
brought in "O que não se pode saber por cartas é o que o outro está
omitindo. Toda correspondência é crivada de perfurações invisíveis, pequenos
buracos deixados pelo que não foi escrito, mas que às vezes foi pensado" ( in a
kind of automatic translation:" what one cannot learn from a letter is that
which the other is hiding by omission. Every mail-exchange is pierced by
invisible marks, little holes left out by what has not been written down but was
present in the mind").