Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019453, Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:17:52 -0200

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Re: QUERY: Red Wop
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Vladimir Mylnikov: Sacco and Vanzetti was the name of the most popular factory in the Soviet Union. They were making pencils. I believe it still exists.

JM: So, powder/red wop indicates "explosives" and "red anarchists" (Sacco and Vanzetti and, originally, Boyle's Italians "with out passports" ie wop). The added touch of "pencil" must have tickled VN!

I see a coincidence operating in the separate, but somehow connected, Nab-L themes (petards and powder).
Btw: Hoist is sufficiently common not to warrant a link bt. Shade's sentence in PF's methods of composition and Shakespeare, I suppose. But, since the theme is still fresh in my mind after exploring feisty petards, here are the two elements: The self-depreciatory "poetesque" is striking. If we add to it Shakespeare's innuendoes, the poetesque is a bomb that explodes in the hand of the anarchist.

Pale Fire: Or is the process deeper with no desk/To prop the false and hoist the poetesque?
Shakespeare: For 'tis the sport to have the engineer/ Hoist with his own petard, an't shall go hard/But I will delve one yard below their mines/And blow them at the moon.
Hamlet III.iv ll. 202-09

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