Subject
Yo-semite? (fwd)
Date
Body
From: ESAMPVN@aol.com
On April 16, Dmitri Nabokov wrote:
>If one truly persists, one can find clues - - deliberate,
>subliminal, or very often fortuitous and unplanted by
>entomologists or sailors - - almost everywhere, such as the
>proposal that "Yosemite" contains "semite"...
The tone of DN's comment implies scepticism, at the very least, but I have
been working on PNIN recently, and when I happened to re-read the relevant
passage after the recent posting(s) (Idon't remember the date(s)) that
occasioned his comment, it struck me that perhaps "Yosemite" does indeed
contain "semite," though not in any "symbolic" sense. The passage (Chap.
Six, section 6) comes when Betty Bliss is inquiring about Victor: "Yes, how
was he, how did he like St. Bart's? He liked it so-so. He had passed the
beginning of the summer in California with his mother, then had worked two
months at a Yosemite hotel. A _what_? A hotel in the California mountains."
Now, Pnin probably knows little or nothing about American parks, especially
Western ones, and he probably was apprised of Victor's activities in writing,
not verbally. Given that a number of Pnin's friends are Jewish, judging by
the names, and that his lost fiancee died in a German concentration camp, his
likely sensitivity to the word "semite" could lead to a quite natural
misinterpretation, and corresponding mispronunciation, of "Yosemite." This
reading would clarify the rest of the quoted passage: Betty's puzzled query
(A _what_?), and Pnin's clarification. It also fits nicely with the many
other passages that illustrate Pnin's obliviousness to many aspects of the
American scene: his inability to identify an endemic North American tree, the
catalpa (Chap Six, section 4); his ignorance of American sports: basketball
and baseball in the same section; (American) football in Chap. Four, section
6; etc. I would be curious to know if others have read the passage this way.
Earl Sampson (ESAMPVN@AOL.COM)
Boulder, Colorado
On April 16, Dmitri Nabokov wrote:
>If one truly persists, one can find clues - - deliberate,
>subliminal, or very often fortuitous and unplanted by
>entomologists or sailors - - almost everywhere, such as the
>proposal that "Yosemite" contains "semite"...
The tone of DN's comment implies scepticism, at the very least, but I have
been working on PNIN recently, and when I happened to re-read the relevant
passage after the recent posting(s) (Idon't remember the date(s)) that
occasioned his comment, it struck me that perhaps "Yosemite" does indeed
contain "semite," though not in any "symbolic" sense. The passage (Chap.
Six, section 6) comes when Betty Bliss is inquiring about Victor: "Yes, how
was he, how did he like St. Bart's? He liked it so-so. He had passed the
beginning of the summer in California with his mother, then had worked two
months at a Yosemite hotel. A _what_? A hotel in the California mountains."
Now, Pnin probably knows little or nothing about American parks, especially
Western ones, and he probably was apprised of Victor's activities in writing,
not verbally. Given that a number of Pnin's friends are Jewish, judging by
the names, and that his lost fiancee died in a German concentration camp, his
likely sensitivity to the word "semite" could lead to a quite natural
misinterpretation, and corresponding mispronunciation, of "Yosemite." This
reading would clarify the rest of the quoted passage: Betty's puzzled query
(A _what_?), and Pnin's clarification. It also fits nicely with the many
other passages that illustrate Pnin's obliviousness to many aspects of the
American scene: his inability to identify an endemic North American tree, the
catalpa (Chap Six, section 4); his ignorance of American sports: basketball
and baseball in the same section; (American) football in Chap. Four, section
6; etc. I would be curious to know if others have read the passage this way.
Earl Sampson (ESAMPVN@AOL.COM)
Boulder, Colorado