Subject
Department of Interesting Facts Unrelated to VN (Dante, gravity,
elephants, and pubs)
elephants, and pubs)
From
Date
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Off-topic, but I can't resist saying that the force that animates
the Dance of the Planets is gravitational attraction--
"L'amor che move il sol e' l'altre stelle."
Jerry Friedman
JF: interesting that Dante’s astronomical knowledge was rather post-medieval — classifying our Sun as a ‘star’ is quite modern! And I can’t resist the crude physicists joke:
“There’s no gravity — the Earth SUCKS!”
Stan Kelly-Bootle
-----------------------------
Dear Jansy,
Um, I don't know where elephants enter the picture, though they seem to be a requisite for anybody writing for the TLS these days (the Wittgensteinian metaphor of 'elephants in the room'). I simply glossed D.Barton Johnson's remarks on "Tselovalnikov" with a note that the double meaning is covered by 'publican' (publicanus: Latin for tax-farmer, the word is in Jerome's vulgate ) at least in English English. I hail from a family of publicans, though they tended to drink all the profits, on the 'one for the customer, and one for the barman' principle of Irish taverners, and paying taxes was always a scramble at the end of the financial year.
Regards, Peter N.Dale
> Peter Dale, did you mention the word "publican", as in British usage applicable to "licensee of a pub", as some kind of elephantine pun?
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the Dance of the Planets is gravitational attraction--
"L'amor che move il sol e' l'altre stelle."
Jerry Friedman
JF: interesting that Dante’s astronomical knowledge was rather post-medieval — classifying our Sun as a ‘star’ is quite modern! And I can’t resist the crude physicists joke:
“There’s no gravity — the Earth SUCKS!”
Stan Kelly-Bootle
-----------------------------
Dear Jansy,
Um, I don't know where elephants enter the picture, though they seem to be a requisite for anybody writing for the TLS these days (the Wittgensteinian metaphor of 'elephants in the room'). I simply glossed D.Barton Johnson's remarks on "Tselovalnikov" with a note that the double meaning is covered by 'publican' (publicanus: Latin for tax-farmer, the word is in Jerome's vulgate ) at least in English English. I hail from a family of publicans, though they tended to drink all the profits, on the 'one for the customer, and one for the barman' principle of Irish taverners, and paying taxes was always a scramble at the end of the financial year.
Regards, Peter N.Dale
> Peter Dale, did you mention the word "publican", as in British usage applicable to "licensee of a pub", as some kind of elephantine pun?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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