Re: [NABOKV-L] Word-wars in Arabic traditions and elsewhere

CHW: Apart from having spent half my growing life in Sweden, I have also lived and worked in the Canadian Arctic. Nobody in these places was ever cold indoors, whatever the temperature outside.

Jansy: As one of the very few Tropicalists here I must say that I never felt as hot as I did while visiting any Northern country during Winter. Why must everyone heat hotels, public facilities and institutions to over 30 degrees Celsius puzzles me..

Item Three

CHW: Dr. Samuel Schuman's Modest Proposal. Information overload is the modern curse...This list is an exception, since personally I find virtually all the remarks amusing, informative, perceptive, erudite and stimulating. My view is that it is up to the reader to perform his/her own filtering. In time, I too will no doubt fall silent. Like Beckett.

Jansy: Now who's talking? Besides, Beckett apparently took years and years before he stopped speaking about silence.

Carolyn K: "I would like to see somewhat shorter notes - - as a member I don't have to read everything that comes to me, but our poor ed.s do."
Jansy: Our editors are editors, not "our poor ed"s. Let them cope as they see fit.
You are wise when you simply delete longer notes instead of deleting other people's. Every subscriber can also become their own Ed.

Item Four

CK: There are hints linking this student to both of Hazel's parents.He is very possibly her half brother and definitely a homosexual interest of her father's.
He is variously referred to in the story as an oriental prince, son of a padishaw, and as an Asiatic potentate. And though his name is never mentioned (like that of the head of the Shadows) it is probably Caspar.

Jansy: Could you demonstrate your intriguing hypothesis or is it too long to post?
This student, a putative half-brother of Hazel and a homosexual interest of their father Shade ( or is he half-brother on the mother's side?) is a recurrence of the incest theme? What is the link bt.the Korean student and Kinbote's black gardener CK insists of seeing dressed up in silks as a prince, a moor, one of the three Magi?

Item Five

Chance brought a 12 or13th Century poem to my attention, with the suggestive title "Unter dem Linden" and, as I checked in the internet, with verses that have been often set to music ( Grieg and lyrics in Swedish, Busoni plus others I forget who). In it I found a description that reminded me of the mattress/pilow theme recently discussed and the not so recent question on Kinbote's patifolia.

There is a poem written by W. von Vogelweide in which an illicit love affair is described. Only a "taranderei" from a bird could reveal its secret, or the evidence of a pillow made of broken flowers where the girl's head had lain... ( this verse, in particular, has not always been translated and often this meaning was eluded).

A direct reading from Shade's verses does not suggest he had any illicit love affair, but Carolyn maintains that he was not always the faithful husband. In his poem Shade still holds by his first love for Sybil. The image of the creased pillow, though, may be an original creation or an allusion to the same "illicit love" as suggested in Vogelweide's.

"We have been married forty years. At least
Four thousand times your pillow has been creased

By our two heads. ..."

Da hat er gemachet schnell, bei Scherzen
Von Blumen reich die Ruhestatt;
Ja, mancher noch lachet von ganzem Herzen,
Wenn er kommt denselben Pfad.
An den Rosen er wohl mag --
Tandaradei
Merken, wo das Haupt mir lag.

"Unter den Linden"

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170?-1228?)

In a Nov. 13, 2002 VN-List posting we find:

EDNOTE. Nabokov's Latin was mostly based in Linnean taxonymy terms. Although W.T. Stern's standard BOTANICAL LATIN does not specifically give the term patifolia, PAT- often has the meaning 'broad'. Hence "patifolia" would mean something like "broad leaf"--a suitable descriptive term for Kinbote's play pillow.
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For other needs than sleep Charles Xavier had installed in the middle of the Persian rug-covered floor a so-called patifolia, that is, a huge, oval,
luxuriously flounced, swansdown pillow the size of a triple bed"--

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