Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0004478, Sat, 16 Oct 1999 09:37:14 -0700

Subject
thank log
Date
Body
From: John Hamilton <jih@psulias.psu.edu>

>What is the meaning of the expression <Thanks Log>? Neither Nabokov or Boyd
> dedicated a note to <Log> and we don't know how to translate it into
italian.
>Can you help us? I hope so, and in any case thank you for your attention.

The Emperor Claudius (10 B.C. - 54 A.D., later deified) referred to himself
as 'Old King Log' towards the end of Robert Graves' 'Claudius the God.'
The connotations were ennui, profound malaise, and waiting for his
neice/wife's son (the future Emperor Nero) to poison him. I don't have
Graves' excellent book on hand, but he used classical sources for nearly
all of his references, and I suspect this is not an exception. I can not
speak toward Nabokov's use of classical references in 'Ada', and there may
be absolutely no connection; if there is a connection, Nabokov may have
become aware of the idea through Graves, or perhaps directly from Graves'
source.

john hamilton