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Fw: Fwd: Re: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
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EDNOTE. Yes, Yagoditsa' IS rUSSIAN FOR "BERRY" "
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello" <jansy@aetern.us>
To: "don barton johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 9:30 AM
Subject: Fw: Fwd: Re: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
> Jansy
> -----Mensagem Original-----
> De: "Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello" <jansy@aetern.us>
> Para: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Enviada em: Quarta-feira, 23 de Fevereiro de 2005 12:39
> Assunto: Re: Fwd: Re: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
>
> Dear Don, Boyd and List,
>
> In the same way that I could not find any existing "burnberry" plant, I
> also cannot find any true "shattal tree", variously identified by Nabokov
> scholars as the Edenic Tree of Knowledge ( of good and evil) . In the Old
> Testament, though, there are two trees growing in the same place, at the
> world´s axis: The tree of knowledge from whose forbidden fruit Adam and
> Eve
> ate and the other, a Tree of Life.
> Van instructed poor dribling Lucette that there can be no two simultaneous
> twins but here we are confronted with those twin paradisical trees. There
> is one, among many, interpretation that suggests that only after reaching
> the first tree one might be able to perceive the other, which would then
> represent another aspect of the same tree.
>
> Undoubtedly Nabokov is a God in his own universe but I think he might also
> be developping the twin-tree image of Genesis through his "shattal tree".
>
> If the mulberry tree can be associated to the silk-worm, then we might
> consider VN´s words on that respect. Ada, Vintage edition, page 95:
> "That might have been true, but according to a later ( considerably
> later!) version they were still in the tree, and still glowing, when Van
> removed the silk thread of larva web from his lip...
>> > (...)
> - I refuse to share the ardor of your little canicule with an apple tree."
> - " It is really the Tree of Knowledge - this specimen was imported last
> summer...
> _... "but I swear no apple trees grow in Iraq." "Right, but that´s not a
> true apple tree."
> ( "Right and wrong", commented Ada, again much later (...) there was no
> National Park in Iraq eighty years ago." " True," said Van. " And no
> caterpillars bred on that tree in our orchard." " True, my lovely and
> larveless." Natural history was past history by that time.)"
>
> So we find, rightly or wrongly, a connection between the shattal tree and
> the mulberry tree, that is later ( eighty years later, the difference in
> time bt. Terra and Antiterra? ) dismissed.
>
> And the burnberries are another invention. Why would they be bogberries
> ( or god/dog berries by their "transmongrelization" ) and not something
> else?
>
> When Aqua plans her suicide she finds a gulch to gulch her pills and
> " began placidly eating from her cupped palm the multicolored contents of
> her handbag, like any Russian country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (
> feasting on berries ) that she had just picked in the woods".
> Could these iricollored pills be a kind of "burnberry", too?
> She chose a dry place, a Californian chaparral "tangled brushwood" and
> not a wet boggy place to die and there she "lay, as if buried
> prehistorically, in a fetus-in-utero position..." ( pages 28/29)
>
> I understand no Russian to know if "yagodami" ( !) means "berries" and if
> it offers any special hint of something that elludes me.
>
> Right and wrong? Good and Evil? Tree of Life?
> Could yagodami point to any kind of existing burnberries that are also
> bogberries?
> Jansy
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
>> > To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>> > Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 7:05 PM
>> > Subject: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
>> >
>> >
>> > I think VN must be smiling on Terra at the thought of Don, with his
>> > rich
>> > knowledge of natural history, imagining that burnberry is a real plant.
> It
>> > is a
>> > plant only in the other sense, "something deliberately placed so that
> its
>> > discovery may deceive or mislead" (W3). But I am hardly surprised that
> it
>> > seems
>> > familiar to him: there are few who know ADA better.
>> >
>> > VN provides a plausible etymology, from "burn" in the sense of brook,
> but
>> it
>> > is
>> > invented as part of the berry motif, which itself pays homage to the
>> drupes
>> > and
>> > berries and other fruit in the central panel of Bosch's Garden of
> Earthly
>> > Delights; but "burnberry" in particular also glances toward the the
>> hellish
>> > right panel, with its lurid fires.
>> >
>> > As for "bury or burn" at 9.09-10: it is quite pointedly an advance
>> > transmutation
>> > of the "burnberry" motif; the fact that it LOOKS different (two words,
>> > different
>> > parts of speech, different spelling) emphasizes the ingenuity of
>> Nabokovian
>> > motif-making and strengthens rather than weakens the link. To my
> judgment
>> at
>> > least "burn or bury" is much less pointedly part of the more diffuse
>> "burn"
>> > motif, associated especially with the Burning Barn, but also more
>> generally
>> > with the idea of the flames of desire. In that sense, perhaps it is
> close
>> > enough to list under "burn" as well. Could you please add, Jeff (burn
>> under
>> > MOTIF and 9.09-10, and links both ways)? I would also add to the
>> > Acknowledgments the name of the person who started this thread if s/he
>> were
>> > willing to discard anonymity.
>> >
>> > And thanks for reading with such attention to detail, and curiosity.
>> > The
>> > best
>> > reward for the effort involved.
>> >
>> > Brian Boyd
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> >
>> > From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
>> > Sent: Wed 2/23/2005 8:12 AM
>> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> > Subject: Fwd: mulberry and burnberry
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > EDNOTE. I too skimmed through my fairly extensive botanical library
>> without
>> > finding "burnberry." Odd, it certainly seems familiar. I wonder if
>> > there
>> is
>> > a
>> > similarly named Russian plant?
>> > -------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
>> > Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:07:38 -0000
>> > From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
>> >
>> > Following Boyd´s fascinating text on the "Inseparable Fates" chapter of
>> his
>> > "
>> > Nabokov´s Ada" I came across once more a very complete and complex
>> analysis
>> > about the mulberry-soap reference.
>> > Soon later I found " Lucete hides among the burnberry bushes" and has
> her
>> > shorts
>> > "stained with burnberry purple".
>> > I remember Boyd explaining that a brook is a "burn" ( page 141) .
>> >
>> > I have not been able to locate any "burnberry" amidst the botanical
>> > references I
>> > could acess. Are there indeed " burnberries" and "burnberry bushes" as
>> real
>> > plants?
>> >
>> > If not, would those plants be an indirect way of introducing the "here
> we
>> go
>> > round the mulberry bush" theme?
>> > If it happens to be so ( burnberry as another way of writing about
>> > mulberry ) we
>> > would once again find those curious exchanges bt word sounds in
>> Nabokov...
>> >
>> > Could any botanist in the list help ?
>> > Jansy
>> >
>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>> >
>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>> >
>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello" <jansy@aetern.us>
To: "don barton johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 9:30 AM
Subject: Fw: Fwd: Re: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
> Jansy
> -----Mensagem Original-----
> De: "Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello" <jansy@aetern.us>
> Para: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Enviada em: Quarta-feira, 23 de Fevereiro de 2005 12:39
> Assunto: Re: Fwd: Re: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
>
> Dear Don, Boyd and List,
>
> In the same way that I could not find any existing "burnberry" plant, I
> also cannot find any true "shattal tree", variously identified by Nabokov
> scholars as the Edenic Tree of Knowledge ( of good and evil) . In the Old
> Testament, though, there are two trees growing in the same place, at the
> world´s axis: The tree of knowledge from whose forbidden fruit Adam and
> Eve
> ate and the other, a Tree of Life.
> Van instructed poor dribling Lucette that there can be no two simultaneous
> twins but here we are confronted with those twin paradisical trees. There
> is one, among many, interpretation that suggests that only after reaching
> the first tree one might be able to perceive the other, which would then
> represent another aspect of the same tree.
>
> Undoubtedly Nabokov is a God in his own universe but I think he might also
> be developping the twin-tree image of Genesis through his "shattal tree".
>
> If the mulberry tree can be associated to the silk-worm, then we might
> consider VN´s words on that respect. Ada, Vintage edition, page 95:
> "That might have been true, but according to a later ( considerably
> later!) version they were still in the tree, and still glowing, when Van
> removed the silk thread of larva web from his lip...
>> > (...)
> - I refuse to share the ardor of your little canicule with an apple tree."
> - " It is really the Tree of Knowledge - this specimen was imported last
> summer...
> _... "but I swear no apple trees grow in Iraq." "Right, but that´s not a
> true apple tree."
> ( "Right and wrong", commented Ada, again much later (...) there was no
> National Park in Iraq eighty years ago." " True," said Van. " And no
> caterpillars bred on that tree in our orchard." " True, my lovely and
> larveless." Natural history was past history by that time.)"
>
> So we find, rightly or wrongly, a connection between the shattal tree and
> the mulberry tree, that is later ( eighty years later, the difference in
> time bt. Terra and Antiterra? ) dismissed.
>
> And the burnberries are another invention. Why would they be bogberries
> ( or god/dog berries by their "transmongrelization" ) and not something
> else?
>
> When Aqua plans her suicide she finds a gulch to gulch her pills and
> " began placidly eating from her cupped palm the multicolored contents of
> her handbag, like any Russian country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (
> feasting on berries ) that she had just picked in the woods".
> Could these iricollored pills be a kind of "burnberry", too?
> She chose a dry place, a Californian chaparral "tangled brushwood" and
> not a wet boggy place to die and there she "lay, as if buried
> prehistorically, in a fetus-in-utero position..." ( pages 28/29)
>
> I understand no Russian to know if "yagodami" ( !) means "berries" and if
> it offers any special hint of something that elludes me.
>
> Right and wrong? Good and Evil? Tree of Life?
> Could yagodami point to any kind of existing burnberries that are also
> bogberries?
> Jansy
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
>> > To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>> > Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 7:05 PM
>> > Subject: ADA's mulberry and burnberry
>> >
>> >
>> > I think VN must be smiling on Terra at the thought of Don, with his
>> > rich
>> > knowledge of natural history, imagining that burnberry is a real plant.
> It
>> > is a
>> > plant only in the other sense, "something deliberately placed so that
> its
>> > discovery may deceive or mislead" (W3). But I am hardly surprised that
> it
>> > seems
>> > familiar to him: there are few who know ADA better.
>> >
>> > VN provides a plausible etymology, from "burn" in the sense of brook,
> but
>> it
>> > is
>> > invented as part of the berry motif, which itself pays homage to the
>> drupes
>> > and
>> > berries and other fruit in the central panel of Bosch's Garden of
> Earthly
>> > Delights; but "burnberry" in particular also glances toward the the
>> hellish
>> > right panel, with its lurid fires.
>> >
>> > As for "bury or burn" at 9.09-10: it is quite pointedly an advance
>> > transmutation
>> > of the "burnberry" motif; the fact that it LOOKS different (two words,
>> > different
>> > parts of speech, different spelling) emphasizes the ingenuity of
>> Nabokovian
>> > motif-making and strengthens rather than weakens the link. To my
> judgment
>> at
>> > least "burn or bury" is much less pointedly part of the more diffuse
>> "burn"
>> > motif, associated especially with the Burning Barn, but also more
>> generally
>> > with the idea of the flames of desire. In that sense, perhaps it is
> close
>> > enough to list under "burn" as well. Could you please add, Jeff (burn
>> under
>> > MOTIF and 9.09-10, and links both ways)? I would also add to the
>> > Acknowledgments the name of the person who started this thread if s/he
>> were
>> > willing to discard anonymity.
>> >
>> > And thanks for reading with such attention to detail, and curiosity.
>> > The
>> > best
>> > reward for the effort involved.
>> >
>> > Brian Boyd
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> >
>> > From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
>> > Sent: Wed 2/23/2005 8:12 AM
>> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> > Subject: Fwd: mulberry and burnberry
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > EDNOTE. I too skimmed through my fairly extensive botanical library
>> without
>> > finding "burnberry." Odd, it certainly seems familiar. I wonder if
>> > there
>> is
>> > a
>> > similarly named Russian plant?
>> > -------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
>> > Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:07:38 -0000
>> > From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
>> >
>> > Following Boyd´s fascinating text on the "Inseparable Fates" chapter of
>> his
>> > "
>> > Nabokov´s Ada" I came across once more a very complete and complex
>> analysis
>> > about the mulberry-soap reference.
>> > Soon later I found " Lucete hides among the burnberry bushes" and has
> her
>> > shorts
>> > "stained with burnberry purple".
>> > I remember Boyd explaining that a brook is a "burn" ( page 141) .
>> >
>> > I have not been able to locate any "burnberry" amidst the botanical
>> > references I
>> > could acess. Are there indeed " burnberries" and "burnberry bushes" as
>> real
>> > plants?
>> >
>> > If not, would those plants be an indirect way of introducing the "here
> we
>> go
>> > round the mulberry bush" theme?
>> > If it happens to be so ( burnberry as another way of writing about
>> > mulberry ) we
>> > would once again find those curious exchanges bt word sounds in
>> Nabokov...
>> >
>> > Could any botanist in the list help ?
>> > Jansy
>> >
>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>> >
>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>> >
>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
>