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a new question ona "centonial" Quilty
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Dear List,
I´ve recently read the poem "Anthology" by Brazilian Manuel Bandeira to which a short note, extracted from a letter he wrote to a friend, was added. In it Bandeira described his "Anthology" as a "cento".
Quoting the extract, in Jean R.Longland´s translation:
"The word cento has nothing to do with 'hundred' but it comes from the Latin cento, centonis, which means a patchwork quilt... I had the idea of constructing a poem out of nothing but lines or parts of lines of mine, the best known or most marked by my sensibility, which at the same time would function as a poem for a person who knew nothing of my poetry".
Quite often I have a nagging sensation that Nabokov used this same "quilt" device for special paragraphs in his novels, with a wink to those who actually "knew something" about his writings.
After getting acquainted with the word "cento" I started to wonder if VN would have been familiar with this classic term for "patchwork quilt" and if he might have played with it in "Lolita" or hinted at his probable novelistic "hybridations" by
using a subtle play with this Latin expression.
Jansy Mello
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I´ve recently read the poem "Anthology" by Brazilian Manuel Bandeira to which a short note, extracted from a letter he wrote to a friend, was added. In it Bandeira described his "Anthology" as a "cento".
Quoting the extract, in Jean R.Longland´s translation:
"The word cento has nothing to do with 'hundred' but it comes from the Latin cento, centonis, which means a patchwork quilt... I had the idea of constructing a poem out of nothing but lines or parts of lines of mine, the best known or most marked by my sensibility, which at the same time would function as a poem for a person who knew nothing of my poetry".
Quite often I have a nagging sensation that Nabokov used this same "quilt" device for special paragraphs in his novels, with a wink to those who actually "knew something" about his writings.
After getting acquainted with the word "cento" I started to wonder if VN would have been familiar with this classic term for "patchwork quilt" and if he might have played with it in "Lolita" or hinted at his probable novelistic "hybridations" by
using a subtle play with this Latin expression.
Jansy Mello
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