Stan Kelly-Bootle: It’s strange
to hear from CK that the Cabot/Lodge (aliter Lowell) aphorism is ‘an admittedly
obscure bit of doggerel.’ I’ve heard both Lodge and Lowell in the
hierarchy, and no doubt other families and locations will appear as the wealthy
dynasties shift with time... VN’s amusing variant rings an instant bell to
moi...Assigning degrees of arcanity is clearly a subjective matter, supported by
anecdotal rather than statistical evidence...Dictionaries rarely reflect the
native speaker’s intuition for linguistic register...It’s a moot point
whether Nabokov deliberately used the rarer bits of Webster II as a full- or
semi-tease, or whether he lacked that deeply ‘in-wired’ native awareness. Some
of each, no doubt. The last place for dogma is in matters sociolinguistical! In
Jonathan Dimbleby’s Russia, A Tour ..., he meets an itinerant Russian labourer
on an overnight train journey, en route to Yasnaya Polyana. Dimbleby holds up
the copy of Anna Karenina he happens to be reading. Repeating the title and
author’s name in reasonable Russian fails to invoke any recognition. Anna the
Obscure, nay, Tolstoy the Unknown? Pointless anecdote? Only if misused!
JM: There's a joke about people quoting lines
from famous writers during another overnight train journey, when
sentences by Baudelaire, Wilde and Tolstoy fly around: "The fault, dear
Brutus, lies not in the stars! William Shakespeare!" or "All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones
are more or less alike! Vladimir Nabokov!". Suddenly, a silent
Brazilian pours out a string of profanity and adds: "Jorge Amado..."
I suppose this anedocte may also be effective while quoting
various other writers, in a similar process to what happens with
the Cabot/Tobak doggerel. Therefore, as Peanuts/Linus once
concluded: "there must be a lesson to be learned from this but I don't know what
it is."
Resuscitating an old posting (qua Malina,
instead of Melona), to recover my ancient faith:
Sandy Klein sends http://wunderkammermag.com/book-reviews/review-original-laura-vladimir-nabokov by Luke Hodina | 09 Mar 2010 ... "Nabokov died in the process
of examining the relationship between artistic creation and death, and through
this incomplete assembly of notes, we have a more complete image of his method
to ordering the chaos of life’s trifles."
JM: ...To describe Nabokov's method
as "ordering chaos of life's trifles" deserves a literary Raspberry Trifletart prize ...The VN 1960 repartee to Wilson [
"( Isn't all art whimsical, from Shakespeare to
Joyce?)" ] capriciously brings in the word "whimsical" (with its trail of
trifles), but I see in it the enchanter, the great conjurer, juggling with human
illusion and truth.