Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0015759, Mon, 3 Dec 2007 04:35:35 -0200

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Re: Hippopotamians: Odd shaped lakes and Time
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Alexey on Brillinger's "Hippopotamians in Ardis": .. "Such a drought affected Hippo in the most productive months of Augustine's bishopric that clepsydras had to be replaced by sandglasses" [ADA].
Carolyn Kunin:Couldn't this be among the several references in Ada to the ancient near east? ...and that odd shaped lake?

Jansy Mello: "Odd shaped lake"... "clepsydras replaced by sandglasses". Isn't there this odd shaped lake in Lolita called Our Glass/ Hourglass?
[ BTW: what a wonderful metaphor about time and mortality drips down from a reference to a severe draught that changes time-measuring devices from water into sand instruments?]
Coleridge's river Alph could apply to an "archetypal river"? Sir Richard Burton's texts also take us to the origins of the Nile, in a move from Mesopotamia towards Egypt.
Hippo ( horse) brought Pegasus to my mind through references to Parnasus, Mount Ida, nymphs and, perhaps, to a fountain that sprung from the impatient hooves of Pegasus.

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