In James Joyce we lip-read: "She thought she's sankh neathe the ground with nymphant shame
when he gave her the tigris eye." Right after these lines, now in Finnegans Wake, Joyce
has added:"O happy fault! Me wish it was he!" (p.202
Faber).
I didn't add two and two together because I was
led astray by a Mesopotamian river
("tigris"), and a Catholic meaning for a "happy
fault" ("felix culpa"). Now, isn't that an example of a goldsmith's (not a
wordsmith's) welding of a "Felix tigris"?
Could VN have spotted and juggled with Joyce's
own play by writing about an American* "Felix tigris
goldsmithi" (Lolita,209-210)?
* - Are there tigers in America? I thought they only roamed in Asian and
Russian landscapes, or in Anti-terra.