Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019426, Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:25:25 -0200

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Re: [NABOKV-L] ftorA. Sklyarenko:Having no Greek, I'm afraid that my explanations concerning phtoros...Fluorine is extremely poisonous.
Stan K-Bootle [to Alexey: perhaps ?????? means/meant “decay” and “demolition” and “destruction!”...James Joyce and Nabokov seem to have suffered a similar lack of Greek in their schooling. It explains, they say, why Joyce’s masterwork is called Ulysses rather than Odysseus?

JM: There seems to be no justified reason to jumble "Torf/Fort/Tfor/Trof." Madame Trofim Fartukoff belongs, rather, to the lineage of "pets" (another sort of gases). Her her native town is associated not only to decay but to "torf's" energetic potencial.
Butterfly-collector and would be scientist, Marat, appears not only in Pale Fire but indirectly in Ada*. He was one of the believers in the "phlogiston." (The phlogiston, from the Ancient Greek φλογιστόν phlŏgistón "burning up", from φλόξ phlóx "fire," is a defunct scientific theory that posited the existence of a fire-like element called "phlogoism" that was contained within combustible bodies, and released during combustion.), another combustible item ...

Why would Joyce have named his novel "Ulysses" instead of Odysseus? Nabokov, all set against a "mythological reading" of Joyce's novel, might have chuckled at Stan's query ...



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* Charlotte Corday/Marat in Ada, and Marat's bath in PF were already themes under discussion in Nab-L

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