Stan Kelly-Bootle
[ to Alexey}:"Your discovery of links between LATH and Mikhail Mikhailovich
Zoshchenko do merit a reward...Your clever anagrammatical games, however, do
little to advance Nabokovian understanding ...Indeed, our enjoyment of VN¡¯s own
wordplays may well suffer from seeing how easy it is to juggle
characters!"
JM: In past postings
you'll find Simon Karlinski's comments about Russian puning
and Nabokov, related to Edmund Wilson's permanent critical stance
towards Nabokov's puns (cf. SK's notes in "Dear Bunny/dear Volodya").
What do you make of that, extracted from "Ultima
Thule"?
"To a lady who has
lost her right hand: I kiss your ellipsis. To a deceased: Respecterfully yours.
But enough of these sheepish vignettes. If you don't remember, then I remember
for you: the memory of you can pass, grammatically speaking at least, for your
memory, and I am perfectly willing to grant for the sake of an ornate phrase
that if, after your death, I and the world still endure, it is only because you
recollect the world and me." *
I'm still in pursuit of "Krug" related
items. Here is one more ( "Solus Rex") : "We are
inclined to attribute to the immediate past (I just had it in my hands, I put it
right there, and now it's not there) lineaments relating it to the unexpected
present...We, the slaves of linked events, endeavor to close the gap with a
spectral ring in the chain. As we look back, we feel certain that the road we
see behind us is the very one that has brought us to the tomb or the
fountainhead near which we find our selves. Life's erratic leaps and lapses can
be endured by the mind only when signs of resilience and quagginess are
discoverable in anterior events."
Am I right to understand that, for
Nabokov, chance-events provide a particular pattern
and a reference-frame to human life by their regular,
whimsical emergence?
.....................................................................................
*- I lost my way bt. Solus Rex and Ultima
Thule, with their wink to chess-experts and computer programs. In a small island (was Zembla an island, too? Did it
also float,. powered by magnets?)... in a small island of text
there's an interlingual mention to Hazel (cf. the color of VN's
passport-eyes):
"The words of the family arms, "see and
rule" (sassed ud halsem), used to be changed by wags, when referring
to him, to "armchair and filbert brandy" (sasse ud hazel)."
I suppose there is a
formula to transpose "halsem" into "hazel."
Stray sound-associations
led me, once again, to "filipino," applied to a love-game
using the twinned kernels of almonds or hazel-nuts (wiki:" Vielliebchen (Brauchtum), den Einsatz, worum jemand mit
einem anderen beim gemeinsamen Essen einer doppelkernigen Frucht gewettet hat").
And, like in our A.S
anagrams, there seems to be a link bt. filisbert and viellibchen,
found through Proust's reference to "philipoena" (as it came out in
English)
"But at the same time,
to these animated dresses the complication of their trimmings, none of which had
any practical utility or served any visible purpose, added something detached,
pensive, secret, in harmony with the melancholy which Mme Swann still retained,
at least in the shadows under her eyes and the drooping arches of her hands...
Beneath the profusion of sapphire charms, enamelled four-leaf clovers, silver
medals, gold medallions, turquoise amulets, ruby chains and topaz chestnuts
there would be on the dress itself some design carried out in colour which
pursued across the surface of an inserted panel a preconceived existence of its
own, some row of little satin buttons which buttoned nothing and could not be
unbuttoned, a strip of braid that sought to please the eye with the minuteness,
the discretion of a delicate reminder; and these, as well as the jewels, gave
the impression¡ªhaving otherwise no possible justification¡ªof disclosing a secret
intention, being a pledge of affection, keeping a secret, ministering to a
superstition, commemorating a recovery from sickness, a granted wish, a love
affair or a philopena."
The original Proust quote:
Mais en m¨ºme temps ¨¤
ces robes si vives, la complication des «garnitures» sans utilit¨¦ pratique, sans
raison d'¨ºtre visible, ajoutait quelque chose de d¨¦sint¨¦ress¨¦, de pensif, de
secret, qui s'accordait ¨¤ la m¨¦lancolie que Mme Swann gardait toujours au moins
dans la cernure de ses yeux et les phalanges de ses mains. Sous la profusion des
porte-bonheur en saphir, des tr¨¨fles ¨¤ quatre feuilles d'¨¦mail, des m¨¦dailles
d'argent, des m¨¦daillons d'or, des amulettes de turquoise, des chaînettes de
rubis, des châtaignes de topaze, il y avait dans la robe elle-m¨ºme tel dessin
colori¨¦ poursuivant sur un empi¨¨cement rapport¨¦ son existence ant¨¦rieure, telle
rang¨¦e de petits boutons de satin qui ne boutonnaient rien et ne pouvaient pas
se d¨¦boutonner, une soutache cherchant ¨¤ faire plaisir avec la minutie, la
discr¨¦tion d'un rappel d¨¦licat, lesquels, tout autant que les bijoux, avaient
l'air ¡ª n'ayant sans cela aucune justification possible ¡ª de d¨¦celer une
intention, d'¨ºtre un gage de tendresse, de retenir une confidence, de r¨¦pondre ¨¤
une superstition, de garder le souvenir d'une gu¨¦rison, d'un vu, d'un amour ou
d'une philippine.
philopena (the
Cassell Concise Dictionary) "a game in which two people share the double
kernel of a nut, the first being entitled to a forfeit, under certain
conditions, on the next meeting with the other sharer; the kernel so shared; the
forfeit." The etymology given was "corr[uption] of G[erman] Vielliebchen,
dim[inutive] of viellieb (viel, much, lieb dear)."
OED and discovered both the sense and the etymology
were more complicated: [Immediate origin unknown. Cf. French philippine
(1869 in the phrase Bonjour, Philippine!...The relationship between these words
is unclear. Later forms in -paene, -pena, -poena app. show folk-etymological
alteration after PHILO- comb. form and POENA n. or its etymon classical Latin
poena.
Quoted in David Lewis Cohn's "The Good Old Days:
History of American Morals and Manners as Seen through the Sears Roebuck
Catalogs": "Another and highly reprehensible way of extorting a gift is to
have what is called a philopena with a gentleman. This very silly joke is when a
young lady, in cracking almonds, chances to find two kernels in one shell; she
shares them with a beau; and whichever calls out 'philopena' on their next
meeting, is entitled to receive a present from the other; and she is to remind
him of it till he remembers to comply. . . . There is a great want of delicacy
and self-respect in philopenaism, and no lady who has a proper sense of her
dignity as a lady will engage in anything of the sort."
And Frank R.
Stockton's story "The Philopena" begins by describing a particularly drastic
forfeit: There were once a Prince and a Princess who, when quite young, ate a
philopena together. They agreed that the one who, at any hour after sunrise the
next day, should accept any thing from the other¡ªthe giver at the same time
saying "Philopena!"¡ªshould be the loser, and that the loser should marry the
other.Posted by languagehat at March 10, 2007 11:09 AM
........
tw: filbert (hazelnut) is applied to "nuts"
(lunatics).