Carolyn observed that " a versipel is not ... a word invented by VN...You will find it in "his" dictionary (Webster's 3rd). It is a synonym of "changeling" - - the same word in Latin dress. "

 

Inspite of various dictionary definitions one thing is certain:  "changeling" cannot be "the same word in Latin dress"...  

 

While watching a David Attenborough BBC-movie about "monster insects" I came across the "botfly", which I vaguely remember VN mentioning in PF.  My dictionary ( COD) described it as " a dipterous fly of the genus Oestrus, with a stout hairy body and parasitic larvae (see bot)."  The TV program showed how the tiny larvae moved from the botfly onto the housefly (which more easily gets to the mammal they will feed on) and then drop off onto their chosen host to develop and change. Would a bot's kin intrusion engender a kind of "multiple personality disorder" in the host?  

 

On a more serious mood...Jerry Friedman made a good point when he wrote: 'On "versipel", no one has mentioned the literal meaning of the passage.  Shade rhymes and roams from room to room, absently holding a comb, a shoehorn, a spoon...he whimsically says one object has turned into another,and just as whimsically calls it a shapechanger; since it's with him all the time as he writes, he calls it his muse,which brings in a pun on the /verse/ he's writing...' 

And yet, this cannot be everything, as JF himself noted when he said that "Of course in Nabokov we can always look for more."

His observation about the "real poet" ( sometimes one may forget Shade is only one of VN's characters), seen as a monster because he deals "technically and esthetically" with bliss or grief common people experience as such, was also quite pertinent.

 

I wonder if "to change grief/bliss into verse" might not be an example of the verb "to versipel" ? 

Jansy