On Feb 19, 2010, at 1:05 PM, Carolyn Kunin wrote:
Dear Matt,
You asked one of those great Nabokovian questions when you asked the red wop question. But I fail to see what is the link between the apparently explosive powder/red wop and Hazel? Or did I miss something (not unlikely)? Or is VN making a non-sequitur kind of joke? Something seems to be missing ... Of course Hazel could be said to be amiss.
Carolyn
... She twisted words: pot, top,
Spider, redips. And “powder” was “red wop.”
She called you a didactic katydid.
I agree that VN's vigorous anti-communism seems a little misplaced on Hazel,
(whose character after all isn't really all that developed);
but let me suggest that metrical verse, much more than prose,
is nearly always a compromise among constraints.
He's enumerated four such invertible pairings in the space of three rhymed iambic lines,
which pretty well establishes that Hazel enjoyed word games.
I think that there probably exist no other semantic reason for "red wop"
other than that, and VN's frequent need to display his contempt for communism.