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foot-noted afterthoughts about Borges et al.
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As usual, one or two afterthoughts belatedly occurred to me and I add them (omtting the main text) in my asterisked foot-notes.
*...Interestingly, Russian Zud sounds like the German word for "South," minus the umlaut.** "South" is a story by Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939), the story that "Zud" parodies. On the other hand, Vasco da Gama, whose name is played upon by Van in his thespionym, sailed southward, doubling Africa, in his journey to India.
**cf. Van's words to Dick C. in Ada: "I have often wondered why the Russian for it... is the same as the German for "schoolboy," minus the umlaut" (1.28). The Russian word Van has in mind is, of course, shuler ***("card-sharper"). Now, Borges' first unpublished book, mentioned in his story "Alef," was "The Hand of a Card-Sharper." Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and letters of several alphabets play an important role in Ada (also, cf. "Alphabet - the Mirror of Life," Varfolomey Korobeynikov's catalogue of requisitioned furniture, in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" and "Friends of the ABC," a secret society in Hugo's "Les Miserables").
***Otherwise, the word shuler almost automatically brings to a Russian reader's mind Satin, a character in Gorky's play Na dne ("At the Bottom"), a card-sharpener and a drunkard, who is made to utter phrases like "Man - this [word] sounds proudly" and "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters, Truth is God of a free man." The ancients believed that truth was in wine...
Alexey Sklyarenko
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*...Interestingly, Russian Zud sounds like the German word for "South," minus the umlaut.** "South" is a story by Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939), the story that "Zud" parodies. On the other hand, Vasco da Gama, whose name is played upon by Van in his thespionym, sailed southward, doubling Africa, in his journey to India.
**cf. Van's words to Dick C. in Ada: "I have often wondered why the Russian for it... is the same as the German for "schoolboy," minus the umlaut" (1.28). The Russian word Van has in mind is, of course, shuler ***("card-sharper"). Now, Borges' first unpublished book, mentioned in his story "Alef," was "The Hand of a Card-Sharper." Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and letters of several alphabets play an important role in Ada (also, cf. "Alphabet - the Mirror of Life," Varfolomey Korobeynikov's catalogue of requisitioned furniture, in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" and "Friends of the ABC," a secret society in Hugo's "Les Miserables").
***Otherwise, the word shuler almost automatically brings to a Russian reader's mind Satin, a character in Gorky's play Na dne ("At the Bottom"), a card-sharpener and a drunkard, who is made to utter phrases like "Man - this [word] sounds proudly" and "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters, Truth is God of a free man." The ancients believed that truth was in wine...
Alexey Sklyarenko
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/