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Re: Torquated pheasant in "Pale Fire"
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Hello, Don
How wonderful to learn that "Torquated" means "ring necked" and the word pheasant came from Phasianus colchis and places the bird in Georgia and Black sea. I had a hard time with a Baron that metamorphosed into "Jupiter Olorinus" in "Ada", until I reached, with Van Veen, the "Three Swans" in Geneva, with its upgraded mural where, instead of Leda, there was a painting of three eggs ready to hatch Helen of Troy, Castor and Polux...
Just to keep on practicing with the English language and Nabokov, I applied myself to an anthology of "accidental assaults upon our language" ( Richard Lederer's collection of bloomers, blunders, malapropisms, grammatical gaffes, gibberish, student howlers and bloopers), where I found something about pheasants and Russia:
' While one student reminisced, "Each Thanksgiving it is a tradition for my family to shoot peasants", another observed, " In nineteenth century Russia, the pheasants led horrible lives".
Pertinent to certain themes here discussed we find, in relation to CK, King Charles II and King Alphin: " The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of his father, but a president isn't";
Concerning RLS's influence on JS and his physical complaints: "The human brain has more convulsions than found in other mammals".And..."Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars"
There is even a question similar to Shakespeare and authorship, but concerning a Greek: " Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name".
This seems to settle it! Before finding this gem I had to rely on Kinbote according to whom Harfar Baron of Shalksbore was "a phenomenally endowed brute" -" whose family name, "knave's farm", is the most probable derivation of "Shakespeare" (note to lines 433-434, page 208)
Sunday greetings,
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 7:31 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Torquated pheasant in "Pale Fire"
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How wonderful to learn that "Torquated" means "ring necked" and the word pheasant came from Phasianus colchis and places the bird in Georgia and Black sea. I had a hard time with a Baron that metamorphosed into "Jupiter Olorinus" in "Ada", until I reached, with Van Veen, the "Three Swans" in Geneva, with its upgraded mural where, instead of Leda, there was a painting of three eggs ready to hatch Helen of Troy, Castor and Polux...
Just to keep on practicing with the English language and Nabokov, I applied myself to an anthology of "accidental assaults upon our language" ( Richard Lederer's collection of bloomers, blunders, malapropisms, grammatical gaffes, gibberish, student howlers and bloopers), where I found something about pheasants and Russia:
' While one student reminisced, "Each Thanksgiving it is a tradition for my family to shoot peasants", another observed, " In nineteenth century Russia, the pheasants led horrible lives".
Pertinent to certain themes here discussed we find, in relation to CK, King Charles II and King Alphin: " The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of his father, but a president isn't";
Concerning RLS's influence on JS and his physical complaints: "The human brain has more convulsions than found in other mammals".And..."Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars"
There is even a question similar to Shakespeare and authorship, but concerning a Greek: " Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name".
This seems to settle it! Before finding this gem I had to rely on Kinbote according to whom Harfar Baron of Shalksbore was "a phenomenally endowed brute" -" whose family name, "knave's farm", is the most probable derivation of "Shakespeare" (note to lines 433-434, page 208)
Sunday greetings,
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 7:31 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Torquated pheasant in "Pale Fire"
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