Thank
you for spending your time and energy to help me.
I'm
truly grateful as well as surprised at some results you've
reached!
I
will check each of them in detail.
Yiğit
Thanks for
identifying the quote in Nabokov's letter to Vera. That's
spot on!
However, there's
another Brecht poem I neglected to provide:
The rain
Never falls upwards.
When the wound
Stops hurting
What hurts is
The scar.
The source is a bit closer to the date of Nabokov's letter:
"Poems Belonging to a Reader for Those who Live in Cities"
[Zum Lesebuch für Städtebewohner gehörige Gedichte]
(1926-1927), poem 10, trans. Frank Jones in Poems, 1913-1956,
p. 148.
A bit more sleuthing (...Googling) and I may be able to
uncover a shared source.
Joseph
Might the source
for rain falling upwards be Lactantius?
Lactantius
- The Divine Institutes, Book III, Ch. 24
"How is it
with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to
our footsteps? Do they say anything to the purpose? Or is
there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men
whose footsteps are higher than their heads? Or that the
things which with us are in a recumbent position, with them
hang in an inverted direction? That the crops and trees grow
downwards? That the
rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth? And
does any one wonder that hanging gardens are mentioned among
the seven wonders of the world, when philosophers make hanging
fields, and seas, and cities, and mountains? The origin of
this error must also be set forth by us. For they are always
deceived in the same manner. For when they have assumed
anything false in the commencement of their investigations,
led by the resemblance of the truth, they necessarily fall
into those things which are its consequences. Thus they fall
into many ridiculous things; because those things which are in
agreement with false things, must themselves be false. But
since they placed confidence in the first, they do not
consider the character of those things which follow, but
defend them in every way; whereas they ought to judge from
those which follow, whether the first are true or false."
Eric Naiman in Nabokov, Perversely
mentions Nabokov's possible reading of Flatland by E. A.
Abbott circa 1926, so the idea of a flat earth would be
something Nabokov would be thinking about, especially as it
relates to his novel The
Luzhin Defense (I seem to remember rain playing a
role in the novel, but a quick scan demonstrates no mention
of rain falling upwards).
It's also possible that Lactantius's
mockery of the spherical earth became a proverbial joke over
time and Nabokov and Brecht are each exploiting that in
their own ways.
Joseph