SES: In order
to understand Nabokov's relationship with America, we should look again at his
proud declaration that he was "as American as April in Arizona." This remark was
not merely rhetorical, despite the artfulness of its alliteration and its
apparent allusion to the popular song "April in Paris."
CK: I also "hear" a reference to another
popular song here - - from South Pacific's "A Wonderful Guy": I'm as
corny as Kansas in August, high as the flag on the Fourth of July. But the
"April in Paris" possibility is interesting too.
JM: Thank you, SES and Carolyn. I had always linked the
expression VN used, with its lovely blend of alliterations, not
with a song but with a slogan "As American as an apple-pie". This led me to a
figurative dead-end because VN's lines mentioned only natural
things: landscape, seasons, butterflies and not ( even if just a pie)
man-made objects or words. The association of his lines and music makes all the
difference for me.
Also CK's information (I had the pleasure of hearing a
duet of viole d'amore years ago...distinguished by two sets of strings, one to
be played, the other to vibrate sympathetically) opens our "ear" to another
kind of reverberative sympathy for VN's neologism ( I think he might
have ignored the word existed in Tzech.), although the context, in my eyes,
suggests some kind of military "skotomized" sentimentality, not the curious
correspondence between sets of strings.