F.Assa: "will you cooperate
with me to cornuate your husband?" ... BTW do women ever receive antlers, horns,
crowns etc. when husbands cuckold them?
JM: Perhaps James Joyce
considered that only husbands, not women, could be cuckolded. At the end of Ch.13 (p.380/ or 365) in "Ulysses" we find
the relation bt. the "cuckoo" (clock) and the "cuckold" and, by the
way in which Joyce divided the chiming ( 9 P.M sounding in three
blocks of three cuckoo sounds), and even though the bird was not a cock, it
seems that there is an allusion to the Gospel ( Peter betrays Jesus
three times before the cock crows). The religious idea of
a "betrayal" is there. And yet, it seems that inspite of Bloom's
synchronous adventures with Gerty, the reference indicates him,
only, as a cuckold.
JM: In SO, when Nabokov mentions his "Swift" poem, he reads
it in Russian and refers to the bird as a "swallow," ( 1962, page 14
on Vintage edition).
Time limitations landed me only
on an old Nabokov-L
posting, of 22 Sep 1998, when Jerry Friedman
and Galya Diment discuss VN & Sentiment referring to VN's
"Swallow" poem where it appears as "also known as the
'Swift'."
My impression was that Nabokov's
voice sounded different from former the one in other recordings. Was this your
impression, too?