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Re: [NABOKOV-LIST] Stylistic distortions and foot-notes
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JM: rather than ³defying computation,² kindergarten maths shows that there
are at most
21 x 5 = 105 c-v (consonant-vowel) combinations from ba to zu, with 21
groups of 5 ³rhymes² (ba to za; be to ze; ... ; bu to zu)
21 x 5 x 21 = 2,205 c-v-c combinations from bab to zuz, with about 21 groups
of 105 ³rhymes (bab to zab; ... ; buz to zuz).
21 x 5 x 21 x 5 x 21 = 231,525 c-v-c-v-c combinations from babab to zuzuz,
with 2,205 groups of 105 final-syllable v-c rhymes; 105 groups of 2,205
final-sylllable c-v-c rhymes; and 21 groups of 11,025 v-c-v-c bisyllabic
rhymes. (Some of these rhyming counts overlap, e.g., the v-c-v-c rhyme
³b-abab/b-azab² is also counted in the v-c rhyme group containing
³bab-ab/baz-ab.²
I say at most¹ and about¹ because some of our consonant letters often
represent the same sound, e.g., c and k; s and z; while occasionally there
are consonants that are not sounded at all! Also, ³rhyme² is a subject to
synchronic and diachronic vagaries.
Next, you check against the OED, and find that only, say, 30,000 of the
231,525 c-v-c-v-c possible ³words² have, so far, been been recorded and
assigned citations, definitions & etymologies.
SO, considering that your examples come from the same (parochial!)
Indo-European language family, one might claim that the real mystery is why
people are mystified or sent into transcendental shock at inevitable
³coincidences² among what are relatively small numbers of possibilities.
This is not to take the fun out of finding the English ³crown/cow/crow²
triplet echoed in Russian (as I mentioned in an earlier posting, the
computer can churn out such examples, plus playful anagrams and arbitrarily
long palindromes, by the thousand -- it¹s ceased to be a creative exercise,
although, of course, the computer does not enjoy its findings as much as we
do [so far]!) but to keep things in perspective and avoid seeking some
other-worldly agency. Mon Dieu, there¹s no end of real, non-computable
mysteries out there to haunt us. Of significance to Nabokovian ³general
pattern seekers² is this week¹s Nobel Physics Prize. First, you may have to
read Ian Stewart¹s ³Fearful Symmetry,² to get a feel for ³symmetry breaking²
for which the 3 Nobelists were honoured. Briefly and paradoxically, too much
symmetry is a bad thing! Too many patterns are possible, and nothing of
interest emerges. Our particular Big Bang was nothing to write home about
until its symmetry broke down splitting the previously single, unified
force into the four basic forces we enjoy today. When the CERN collider is
up¹n¹running, we¹ll be closer to replicating those initial conditions and
hopefully learning more about how we came to be here as bundles of heavy
molecules, enjoying VN¹s plots and word-games.
Jansy: you¹ve probably heard it said that ³Puns are the lowest form of
humour.² I suppose some puns are weaker (more obvious, or more ³contrived²)
than others, but it¹s quite subjective to rate them. VN seems to be using
Kinbote¹s evaluation of Shade¹s pun as a sign that VN himself was not
over-proud of the peut-etre/potato joke.
Re-weeping willow: for some reason, the only botanical tree-name I know
without googling is SALIX BABYLONICA, which invokes Verdi¹s Nabucco, Va
Penseiro.
Whence endless word-sound interactions: I certainly endorse SES¹s comment
³ ... A typical Nabokovian device, that visual memory becomes animated by
sound.² (p 73 ³How Nabokov Rewrote America,² Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, in the
never-far-from-my-bedside Cambridge Companion to Nabokov). Once linked in
the mind, there¹s no escaping the sequence L-o-l-i-t-a from images of
Humbert succumbing to her labio-dental temptations, even if the movies
prudishly substitute ice-creams and lollipops.
I should add that Darwin and others have find common cross-cultural features
in HomSap¹s body-language and facial expressions (but some smiles are
snarls!) yet it¹s a stretch [sic] to extend these to universal mappings of
word-sounds to emotions. ³Please² and the photographer¹s ³Say Cheese² may
both stretch the lips as in a smile in many languages, but so do ³Greed² and
³Bleed!² ³Bitte² and ³Bitter² also look and sound the same to me. And what
if you hate ³Cheese?² Our in-family joke when taking pictures is ³Say
Gorganzola!² This relates to JF¹s recent confession that he does not share
VN¹s sensayuma, and the subseqent problem of defining ³humour² in any
objective way. Most attempts (e.g., Freud¹s) turn out to be the least funny
projects imaginable. Explaining ³jokes² has been compared, unfairly, with
killing and dissecting a butterfly to see how it works.
Discuss with special reference to a great novelist who enjoyed tom-peeping
dead insects¹ genitalia. What would Freud make of that? Strongly
recommended: Jed Rubenfeld¹s semi-factual ³The Interpretation of Murder,²
for insights into the Jung/Freud fall-out, Freud¹s anti-Americanism, and
esp. the PLOT based on Freud¹s juicy, controversial ³Dora² case history
(young woman sexually harassed by her father¹s best friend apparently
influencing Freud¹s Oedipal interpretations of female hysteria. Dora catches
a glimpse of the best-friend¹s wife fellating her father (why do these
Austrians have all the fun?) -- is she shocked or jealous?
Recent (for me) sighting:
³ ¹Les papillons ne sont que des fleurs envolees un jour de fete,¹ ecrivait
Georges Sand qui, comme Nabokov, Gerard de Nerval ou Colette, vouait une
veritable passion aux papillons. Elle est feerique, en effet, la beaute de
ces insectes, dont l¹evocation rime avec elegance, legerete, raffinement et
poesie.² (Les Papillons d¹Europe (Rhopaloceres et Heteroceres
Diurnes),²introduction by Gerald Hibon, Delachaux et Nestle, 1989)
skb
On 13/10/2008 01:34, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Stan K-B: the prolific & weird mathematician Paul Erdo:s [...] was fond of
> word-games. He pointed out that ³old/cold² was a rare, sad rhyming pair that
> also rhymed in German: ³alt/kalt.²[...] Question remains: the reason for VN¹s
> aversion to Finnegans Wake? Did Joyce go TOO FAR, OVER-teeming with allusions,
> puns, spoonerisms, anagrams[...]
>
> Kinbote:"There exists to my knowledge one absolutely extraordinary,
> unbelievably elegant case, where not only two[mountain-fountain], but three
> words are involved[...] A newspaper account of a Russian tsar¹s coronation
> had, instead of korona (crown), the misprint vorona (crow), and when next day
> this was apologetically "corrected," it got misprinted a second time as korova
> (cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-crow-cow series and the
> Russian korona-vorona-korova series is something that would have, I am sure,
> enraptured my poet. I have seen nothing like it on lexical playfields and the
> odds against the double coincidence defy computation [...] Goethe¹s two lines
> opening the poem [Wind-Kind] come out most exactly and beautifully, with the
> bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent-enfant), in my own language
> [vett-dett]."
>
>
> JM: VN, like Shade, was enraptured by hidden resonances and linguistic
> aerobics but it is my impression that he harbored a sense of "sacred mystery"
> towards words and coincidences. From this perspective Joyce's wake would come
> very close to heresy.
> Perhaps this opinion would echo only Kinbote's for, concerning Shade's play
> with "The Great Potato" (Rabelais' "le grand peut-être), Kinbote noted that it
> was an "execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to
> stress lack of respect for Death." In connection to "If" (yew in French,
> weeping willow in Zemblan, perhaps in IPH) he added: "I am also obliged to
> observe that I strongly disapprove of the flippancy with which our poet
> treats, in this canto, certain aspects of spiritual hope which religion alone
> can fulfill."
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are at most
21 x 5 = 105 c-v (consonant-vowel) combinations from ba to zu, with 21
groups of 5 ³rhymes² (ba to za; be to ze; ... ; bu to zu)
21 x 5 x 21 = 2,205 c-v-c combinations from bab to zuz, with about 21 groups
of 105 ³rhymes (bab to zab; ... ; buz to zuz).
21 x 5 x 21 x 5 x 21 = 231,525 c-v-c-v-c combinations from babab to zuzuz,
with 2,205 groups of 105 final-syllable v-c rhymes; 105 groups of 2,205
final-sylllable c-v-c rhymes; and 21 groups of 11,025 v-c-v-c bisyllabic
rhymes. (Some of these rhyming counts overlap, e.g., the v-c-v-c rhyme
³b-abab/b-azab² is also counted in the v-c rhyme group containing
³bab-ab/baz-ab.²
I say at most¹ and about¹ because some of our consonant letters often
represent the same sound, e.g., c and k; s and z; while occasionally there
are consonants that are not sounded at all! Also, ³rhyme² is a subject to
synchronic and diachronic vagaries.
Next, you check against the OED, and find that only, say, 30,000 of the
231,525 c-v-c-v-c possible ³words² have, so far, been been recorded and
assigned citations, definitions & etymologies.
SO, considering that your examples come from the same (parochial!)
Indo-European language family, one might claim that the real mystery is why
people are mystified or sent into transcendental shock at inevitable
³coincidences² among what are relatively small numbers of possibilities.
This is not to take the fun out of finding the English ³crown/cow/crow²
triplet echoed in Russian (as I mentioned in an earlier posting, the
computer can churn out such examples, plus playful anagrams and arbitrarily
long palindromes, by the thousand -- it¹s ceased to be a creative exercise,
although, of course, the computer does not enjoy its findings as much as we
do [so far]!) but to keep things in perspective and avoid seeking some
other-worldly agency. Mon Dieu, there¹s no end of real, non-computable
mysteries out there to haunt us. Of significance to Nabokovian ³general
pattern seekers² is this week¹s Nobel Physics Prize. First, you may have to
read Ian Stewart¹s ³Fearful Symmetry,² to get a feel for ³symmetry breaking²
for which the 3 Nobelists were honoured. Briefly and paradoxically, too much
symmetry is a bad thing! Too many patterns are possible, and nothing of
interest emerges. Our particular Big Bang was nothing to write home about
until its symmetry broke down splitting the previously single, unified
force into the four basic forces we enjoy today. When the CERN collider is
up¹n¹running, we¹ll be closer to replicating those initial conditions and
hopefully learning more about how we came to be here as bundles of heavy
molecules, enjoying VN¹s plots and word-games.
Jansy: you¹ve probably heard it said that ³Puns are the lowest form of
humour.² I suppose some puns are weaker (more obvious, or more ³contrived²)
than others, but it¹s quite subjective to rate them. VN seems to be using
Kinbote¹s evaluation of Shade¹s pun as a sign that VN himself was not
over-proud of the peut-etre/potato joke.
Re-weeping willow: for some reason, the only botanical tree-name I know
without googling is SALIX BABYLONICA, which invokes Verdi¹s Nabucco, Va
Penseiro.
Whence endless word-sound interactions: I certainly endorse SES¹s comment
³ ... A typical Nabokovian device, that visual memory becomes animated by
sound.² (p 73 ³How Nabokov Rewrote America,² Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, in the
never-far-from-my-bedside Cambridge Companion to Nabokov). Once linked in
the mind, there¹s no escaping the sequence L-o-l-i-t-a from images of
Humbert succumbing to her labio-dental temptations, even if the movies
prudishly substitute ice-creams and lollipops.
I should add that Darwin and others have find common cross-cultural features
in HomSap¹s body-language and facial expressions (but some smiles are
snarls!) yet it¹s a stretch [sic] to extend these to universal mappings of
word-sounds to emotions. ³Please² and the photographer¹s ³Say Cheese² may
both stretch the lips as in a smile in many languages, but so do ³Greed² and
³Bleed!² ³Bitte² and ³Bitter² also look and sound the same to me. And what
if you hate ³Cheese?² Our in-family joke when taking pictures is ³Say
Gorganzola!² This relates to JF¹s recent confession that he does not share
VN¹s sensayuma, and the subseqent problem of defining ³humour² in any
objective way. Most attempts (e.g., Freud¹s) turn out to be the least funny
projects imaginable. Explaining ³jokes² has been compared, unfairly, with
killing and dissecting a butterfly to see how it works.
Discuss with special reference to a great novelist who enjoyed tom-peeping
dead insects¹ genitalia. What would Freud make of that? Strongly
recommended: Jed Rubenfeld¹s semi-factual ³The Interpretation of Murder,²
for insights into the Jung/Freud fall-out, Freud¹s anti-Americanism, and
esp. the PLOT based on Freud¹s juicy, controversial ³Dora² case history
(young woman sexually harassed by her father¹s best friend apparently
influencing Freud¹s Oedipal interpretations of female hysteria. Dora catches
a glimpse of the best-friend¹s wife fellating her father (why do these
Austrians have all the fun?) -- is she shocked or jealous?
Recent (for me) sighting:
³ ¹Les papillons ne sont que des fleurs envolees un jour de fete,¹ ecrivait
Georges Sand qui, comme Nabokov, Gerard de Nerval ou Colette, vouait une
veritable passion aux papillons. Elle est feerique, en effet, la beaute de
ces insectes, dont l¹evocation rime avec elegance, legerete, raffinement et
poesie.² (Les Papillons d¹Europe (Rhopaloceres et Heteroceres
Diurnes),²introduction by Gerald Hibon, Delachaux et Nestle, 1989)
skb
On 13/10/2008 01:34, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Stan K-B: the prolific & weird mathematician Paul Erdo:s [...] was fond of
> word-games. He pointed out that ³old/cold² was a rare, sad rhyming pair that
> also rhymed in German: ³alt/kalt.²[...] Question remains: the reason for VN¹s
> aversion to Finnegans Wake? Did Joyce go TOO FAR, OVER-teeming with allusions,
> puns, spoonerisms, anagrams[...]
>
> Kinbote:"There exists to my knowledge one absolutely extraordinary,
> unbelievably elegant case, where not only two[mountain-fountain], but three
> words are involved[...] A newspaper account of a Russian tsar¹s coronation
> had, instead of korona (crown), the misprint vorona (crow), and when next day
> this was apologetically "corrected," it got misprinted a second time as korova
> (cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-crow-cow series and the
> Russian korona-vorona-korova series is something that would have, I am sure,
> enraptured my poet. I have seen nothing like it on lexical playfields and the
> odds against the double coincidence defy computation [...] Goethe¹s two lines
> opening the poem [Wind-Kind] come out most exactly and beautifully, with the
> bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent-enfant), in my own language
> [vett-dett]."
>
>
> JM: VN, like Shade, was enraptured by hidden resonances and linguistic
> aerobics but it is my impression that he harbored a sense of "sacred mystery"
> towards words and coincidences. From this perspective Joyce's wake would come
> very close to heresy.
> Perhaps this opinion would echo only Kinbote's for, concerning Shade's play
> with "The Great Potato" (Rabelais' "le grand peut-être), Kinbote noted that it
> was an "execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to
> stress lack of respect for Death." In connection to "If" (yew in French,
> weeping willow in Zemblan, perhaps in IPH) he added: "I am also obliged to
> observe that I strongly disapprove of the flippancy with which our poet
> treats, in this canto, certain aspects of spiritual hope which religion alone
> can fulfill."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/