Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021031, Mon, 6 Dec 2010 13:46:13 -0500

Subject
QUERY: LaFontaine was wrong?
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Date
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Well, really three queries, one of a technical nature:

I assume that VN(Shade) has inverted the sense of the original when he writes:

Lafontaine was wrong:
Dead is the mandible, alive the song.

but I've never been able to track down the original. Does anybody know anything about this?

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Apparently the 92 Street Y <http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/from_the_poetry_center_archive_vladimir_nabokov_aesthetic_bliss/>
has transferred its audio files of VN readings to the safekeeping of the New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/nabokov.html>.

I can't get their links to work on my system (MacBook 4,1; running OSX 10.6). They use some form of Real Audio file which may be out-of-date. I don't have ready access to other machines and was wondering if anyone else is able to get these files to play? If there's any interest I might be able to post directions to mp3 versions of some of these files.

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Finally does anyone believe, as Kinbote suggests, that an empty emerald case is an American colloquialism for

... the semitransparent envelope left on a tree trunk by an adult cicada that has crawled up the trunk and emerged.

Isn't this just something made up by VN?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
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