Stan[ to
JM's "another Nabokovian coinage is the
unsoft "mollitude", often applied to Villa Venus...However, non-etymological
associations are common in our mind's underworld, particularly in the case of
polyglots such as Nabokov"] he 17th century slang, Molly for
tart/prostitute has survived chiefly in the American gangster's MOLL.
But, slang comes and goes. We still have the wonderful MOLLYCODDLE, meaning 'to
pamper.' And, note that almost any girl's name can be used offensively
for gay males ...VN's MOLLITUDE is a sweet portmanteau coinage, which
SHOULD mean something like soft-centred solitude? It follows all the rules
of English agglutination, as with certitude and plenitude. Well done with
LUX-NUX-NOX. All three words are valid in both Latin and English dictionaries.An
all proper-English word-golf solution offers a HOLE IN ONE, of course:
LIGHT-NIGHT. Or vice-versa, since all solutions are reversible.
JM: Light/Night, hole in one. Looks so easy! Mollitude is
a kind of "mollycoddling" (those soft-running velvet-cushioned carriages leading
to Villa Venus) but your "polyglot-mind's underworld" added a particular item
("soft-centered solitude"). Nice.
Matt Roth: All the recent
discussion of Botkin's relationship to Kinbote (and K's relationship to Shade),
brought me back to Carolyn Kunin's discussion of Jekyll & Hyde. Carolyn
pointed out the parasite theme in PF and related it to VN's lecture on
Stevenson, where he whimsically relates Hyde's name to hydatid, "a tiny pouch
within the body of man and other animals, a pouch containing a limpid fluid with
larval tapeworms in it--a delightful arrangement, for the little tapeworms at
least." VN's definition here is quite similar to the definition in Webster's
2nd, so we can imagine that, while researching Hyde's name, VN came across this
similar word and noted the fitting connection. It is apparent, however, that
VN's interest in parasites included more than just definitions in the
dictionary. When preparing to write PF, he must have looked up info on the
bot-fly...The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 48:558, describing the
undesirable nature of tapeworms, which "frequently crawl out of a person's anal
canal"... it does contain an extensive description of "hydatid disease." Did VN
consider using a tapeworm as the parasitic image in PF before settling on the
bot-fly? Was he led to this article by a card catalogue entry for
"hydatid"? ...
JM: Inspite of the reference to "hydatid" in VN's lecture and
the parasitic behavior of the botfly I very much doubt it that Nabokov
would have linked the two. Teniasis (also designated by "solitaria" ie, enjoying
intestinal mollitudes) is so very different from what one finds in cattle
infected by "bicho berna" (the larvae inserted into an animal's
skin by a botfly). Nabokov cannot have approached such different parasites
as if related, not even in his verbal dreams!
I'm frustrated because I couldn't yet locate the link someone
made between Phanes and the pythagorean butterfly (there's a "butterfly
theorem" though). Wandering through esoteric places, I found one entry which
hints at Kinbote's apparent displeasure with the Red Admirable (would
it lay eggs directly on rotten organic matter?), a link between butterflies
and witches.
Here it is: "Butterflies symbolize witches and
fairies, but also the souls of witches. Butterflies and witches have the ability
to change their form - butterflies change in the course of their development -
witches allegedly can change at will. Some people who view the butterfly as the
soul of a witch believe that, if they can find her body and turn it around while
she is asleep, the soul will not be able to find her mouth and reenter, and the
witch will probably die. This concept of the soul may serve to explain why many
medieval angels have butterfly wings rather than those of a bird" www.spelwerx.com/symbols.html