Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023008, Tue, 3 Jul 2012 18:36:36 -0300

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Re: [Fwd: Re: THOUGHTS: ADA, Van, and the "cory door"]
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Mike Marcus:...... the reason that "cory-door" isn't what you describe as an "inoffensive wordplay" is because it doesn't really qualify. VN plays neither with the word cory, nor with door. They are out in plain sight. I suggest that he believed that the reference to William Cory was so obscure -- it first depends on identifying the Sidney-Wilton-Pembroke connection -- that he was prepared to leave it exposed.

Jansy Mello: I formulated my point incorrectly. The best term for "cory-door" shouldn't have been "wordplay," but another one, perhaps related to phonetics, to an invented system for the notation of sounds. In this case, it wouldn't have to mean anything more complex than simply a transposition of "corridor."
The importance of the indication of William Cory's name in the context of ADA isn't totally clear yet. It's still too convoluted a way to point to Sir Philip Sydney, one that's not a Nabokovian kind of convolution (as I see it). There must be other hidden links that'll turn this hide-and-seek allusion into something less obscure. Perhaps if one searched into Speak,Memory's recollections of VN tutors, or those amusing two (Beauchamp and Campbell) in Pale Fire, following the lead of "tutors" Or references to ancient Greek?

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