Matthew Roth brought up the word "ament",
about which I had posted a comment in the past weeks, and linking
it to "amentia".
While still checking
the correctness of my quote about Freud's joke on itineraries ( where he
doesn't mention Pinsk or Minsk but Cracow and Lemberg - and from
which the added "scouse-not" is absent*), I
found the correlation Freud established between the
famous:
"Traduttore-Traditore",
and another pair,
"Amantes-Amentes"
( "Lovers-Fools") - both of
them examples of "Modifikationswitz", as on page 49
in Freud's Der Witz und Seine Beziehung Zum Unbewussten der Humor,
Psychologie Fischer, 1992. In the English Standard Edition,vol. VIII,
1905).
Jansy
* - The original joke reads: "Wenn du sagst, du
fahrst nach Krakau, willst du doch, dass ich glauben soll, du fahrst nach
Lemberg. Nun weiss ich aber, dass du wirklich fahrst nach Krakau. Also warum
lügst du?", on page 130.PF,1992). Freud quotes it as an example
of "sceptical humor", when the "truth" under attack comes not by
questioning a person or an institution, but our own speculative
abilities.
VN's sceptical chuckle hides behind Kinbote's
various apparent flights of fancy.
A great part of Kinbote's style can be
found as underlying the techniques outlined by Freud on his work on
"Witzen".
Jansy