Sandy Klein
sent: http://www.ahoneyofananklet.com/2010/01/03/powerful-kramler-nabokov-decoded/
Powerful Kramler: Nabokov decoded /posted by
David Gorsline
Kinbote writes of dialling 11111 ... Australia adopted 000 in
1961. Use of 11111 for emergency purposes is undocumented, as far as my searches
go.
Nabokov appears to have introduced two coinages in the book, one by Shade
(”And that odd muse of mine,/My versipel, is with me everywhere,/In carrel and
in car, and in my chair.” [ll. 946-948]) and one by Kinbote (”The Shades were
out, said the cheeky ancillula, an obnoxious little fan who came to cook for
them on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to cuddle her some
wifeless day.” [note to line 802]). Versipel is glossed as a back-formation from
versipellous, “changeable; protean; having a form, nature or appearance that
changes often.” Ancillula is from the Latin, and is a diminutive of ancilla,
“handmaid.”
JM: Matt Roth has explored the
"versipel" in connection to werewolves. The changeable aspect could relate to
moths and butterflies, too, but they'd have to be "furry" at one time during
their metamorphosis. The other word, "ancillula", has made an entrance in
Bend Sinister and, with no diminutive, it was used in "A book entitled
Lolita" (if I remember it correctly) in: "sex is the ancilla of
art."