wrote:
Re: [NABOKV-L] Lord Byron's Hock
I suspect VN may also be punning on the slang meaning of ‘hock’ = ‘pawn.’ You pawn/hock diverse objects at the pawn/hock-shop, depositing them as security for short-term cash
loans. Later your goods are REDEEMED = returned to you, by paying back the loan plus, of course, an exorbitant interest. It was a regular weekly feature of working-class ‘cash-trickle management’ in my Liverpool youth: Paid Friday; Broke Monday; Pawn Tuesday;
Redeem Friday.
Failure to redeem on time means you relinquish your goods, which then go on sale in the pawn-shop window. That fate overtook my granny’s false-teeth, but I digress ...
Much celebrated in folksong & shanty:
“Me boots and clothes is all in pawn;
Chorus: “Go down you Blood-Red Roses ... Go down!
“An’ it’s bleedin’ drafty ‘round Cape Horn!
Chorus.
There are fanciful ditties where the object being pawned is one’s heart or dream. VN’s ‘Our Lady’s Tears’ falls into this category.
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 03/02/2013 00:11, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark1970@mail.ru> wrote:
'Ah!' said Demon, tasting Lord Byron's Hock. 'This redeems Our Lady's Tears.'
(Ada, 1.38)
Hock is mentioned in Byron's The Waltz (1813):
Imperial Waltz! Imported from the Rhine
(Famed for the growth of pedigrees and wine),
Long be thine import from all duty free,
And hock itself be less esteem’d than thee;
In some few qualities alike—for hock
Improves our cellar—thou our living stock.
The head to hock belongs—thy subtler art
Intoxicates alone the heedless heart:
Through the full veins thy gentler poison swims,
And wakes to wantonness the willing limbs.
In vain I hoped that VN's play The Waltz Invention had something to do with Byron's poem.* But his hock redeemed my disappointment.
*According to some commentators, "Calembourg" mentioned in VN's play by Waltz is London. Yet, the poet Turvalski (whose poem is recited by one of the generals) seems to be in no way related to the Countess of Waltzaway (a distant relation of Horace Hornem's
spouse). Horace Hornem, the fictitious author of The Waltz, was invented by Byron.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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