Many of his translated Zemblan words refer
to agricultural life (vebodar, bores and other references to
arcadian pastoralism, to pastoral medieval songs and Houdisnki's
oeuvre, related to "Prince Igor") and apparently trivial information
(such as mown-trop and mow (in Zemblan muwan) ].
The use of "wodnaggen" may be connected to another word
offered in PF (Grindelwod, a fine town in E. Zembla, 71, 149). Wodnaggen, related to Judge Goldsmith's taste,
might indicate an instance
of "poshlust." [.
"Actually, it was an old, dismal, white-and-black,
half-timbered house, of the type termed wodnaggen in my country, with carved
gables, drafty bow windows and a so-called "semi-noble" porch, surmounted by a
hideous veranda.". ]
..........................................................
PS: I just noticed that there are two indications in PF's Index that point
to the same notes: will they yield any information about "wodnaggen" by their
corresponding entries? I don't think so, but they bring up another kinds
of information.
Grindelwod, a fine town in E.
Zembla, 71, 149.
Falkberg, a pink cone, 71; snowhooded,
149.
from note 71 (parents)
My
tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house."
[ ] He was a wretched linguist having at his disposal only a few phrases
of French and Danish, but every time he had to make a speech to his subjects —
to a group of gaping Zemblan yokels in some remote valley where he had
crash-landed — some uncontrollable switch went into action in his mind, and he
reverted to those phrases, flavoring them for topical sense with a little Latin.
[ ]Charles Xavier had gone to an all-night ball in the so-called Ducal
Dome in Grindelwod: for the nonce, a formal heterosexual affair, rather
refreshing after some previous sport. At about four in the morning, with the sun
enflaming the tree crests and Mt. Falk, a pink cone, the King stopped his
powerful car at one of the gates of the palace. The air was so delicate, the
light so lyrical, that he and the three friends he had with him decided to walk
through the linden bosquet the rest of the distance to the Pavonian
Pavilion where guests were lodged
from note
149:
The Bera Range, a two-hundred-mile-long chain
of rugged mountains, not quite reaching the northern end of the Zemblan
peninsula (cut off basally by an impassable canal from the mainland of madness),
divides it into two parts, the flourishing eastern region of Onhava and other
townships, such as Aros and Grindelwod, and the much narrower western
strip with its quaint fishing hamlets and pleasant beach resorts [ ] The
nippern (domed hills or "reeks") to the south were broken by a rock and grass
slope into light and shadow. Northward melted the green, gray, bluish mountains
— Falkberg with its hood of snow, Mutraberg with the fan of its avalanche,
Paberg (Mt. Peacock), and others, — separated by narrow dim valleys with
intercalated cotton-wool bits of cloud that seemed placed between the receding
sets of ridges to prevent their flanks from scraping against one another. Beyond
them, in the final blue, loomed Mt. Glitterntin, a serrated edge of bright
foil; and southward, a tender haze enveloped more distant ridges which led
to one another in an endless array...
Btw: Falkberg somehow refers to the red-riding
hood, red-clothed impersonators (Julius Steinmann), a Faulkner
"buchmann" - and 'womenses"
"Our blue
inenubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Steinmann [ ]At a high point
upon an adjacent ridge a steinmann (a heap of stones erected as a
memento of an ascent) had donned a cap of red wool in his honor[ ] his
heart was a conical ache [ ] The little cap of red velvet in the German
version of Little Red Riding Hood is a symbol of menstruation. (Quoted by Prof.
C. from Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 1951, N.Y., p. 240.) In
front of their garage, on the ground, I noticed a buchmann, a little
pillar of library books which Sybil had obviously forgotten there. I bent
towards them under the incubus of curiosity: they were mostly by Mr.
Faulkner; and the next moment Sybil was back..
and back to "feuilles d'alarme": "the flashing of tinfoil scares in the hillside
vineyards." (it occurs to me that "to foil" also means to abort,
to frustrate, a check-mate, to cheat...)
.