Kinbote notes (lines 1-4) that the “armorial bearings of the Zemblan King” included “a merman azure, crined or”.  A few years ago I came across this merman’s mate, a mermaid azure, crined or, in the northern French seaside town of Wimereux. Her name is Iodie. She represents the spirit of the town, and there’s a picture of her below, which might amuse.

 

Jansy wrote that in Bend Sinister VN remarked that  the term ‘bend sinister’ points to the heraldic bar which splits an escutcheon in two from left to right: "This choice of title  was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being.”  This reminded me of the Nattochdag escutcheon, which Iodie is gazing at with raised eyebrows. The shield dates at least from 1280, around the time when the Swedish tribe of Rus were laying the foundations of what eventually became Russia.

 

In her Gothic Tales Karen Blixen danished the name to Nat-og-dag, and rotated the shield’s split from horizontal to vertical, also changing the tinctures to black and white. Her version seems to have more direct application to the window mirror in PF. I still harbour a submerged hankering to nail Professor Nattochdag, whom Kinbote saw every day, “the dear man”, as the ultimate author of everything, but realise that he, and the womb of nations, have sparked relatively little interest among Nabokovians --- Priscilla Meyer being an exception. Kinbote omits to include this Professor in his index. Two branches of descendants of the Nattochdag family currently live in America, under the unexplained names of Dagg and DeRemee.

 

 

On the topic of whether the Nabokovs were aristocrats, or not, I found that a detailed  family tree had been worked out, presented on the “Nabokov Family Web”, by Dieter Zimmer, here:

 

http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/nfw_toc.htm

 

Unfortunately the diagram of the tree itself failed to appear when I accessed the site.

 

On the topic of whether anybody still reads Carl Sandburg I was slightly stunned, when I slipped a dvd from a just recently received order into my machine, to be greeted by the weirdly coincidental sight of a recording of Orson Welles, would you believe, giving a reading of Sandburg’s Prairie, on American television. This was in 1955 or ’56, so Sandburg may well have sunk into total obscurity since then. Paradoxically enough, given his politics, Sandburg included the Swedish royal house of Vasa in his ancestry.

 

Various films have been mentioned recently in connection with VN on the list. Watching Bergman’s Persona (1966) again, I noticed that the young boy, who is either the neglected son of one of the women, or the aborted feotus of the other (interchangeable) woman, is briefly shown reading A Hero of Our Time, in Swedish, of course. One wonders why. In Shakespeare Wallah (1965)  one of the travelling troupe of actors, an Indian, is more pointedly shown to be reading Lolita.  Other films which come to mind, as addressing the themes of immortality and identity in what strikes me as a post-Nabokovian manner, are Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970). A more recent American film which also appears to me similarly to treat the question of identity is The Usual Suspects (1970).

 

After finishing Melville’s Pierre, I certainly felt I’d been through one of the more extraordinary reading experiences of my life. Although greatly daunted, I now must really try to get to grips with Ada. Some time soon. The Nabokov Companion has arrived, and I’ve read SES's and Pifer’s articles. I’ll avoid resuscitating the question of literary national identity, however. Neither Amis nor Rand are among my favourite authors. In reading a review of the marvellous Helen Mirren’s impersonation of the latter, nevertheless, I noted that Rand is evidently a name to conjure with. Mirren was described as taking the lead in The Passion of Ann Rynd. Even VN might have been tickled by that.

 

Jansy’s question about “feather” as a rowing term [SS on self-references: Tue, 23 Jan] seems to have fallen through the interstices of this reticulated or decussated internetwork, as I don’t appear to have received it. However, SB’s careful explanation again impels me to bring up Carroll’s deathless masterpiece, and quote: “Why do you say ‘Feather’ so often?” Alice  asked at last, rather vexed.  “I’m not a bird!”  “You are,” said the Sheep: “you’re a little goose.”  See Gardner, The Annotated Alice, p.254, Meridian 1960.

 

Charles