If I'm not mistaken, this conversation began with the theme of "cunning
stunts" which, in former postings ( for example, Eric Naiman's in August 12,
2004) shuttle between this title and "Oh, Calcutta". It has now
been distilled, perhaps, through glassy digestive "coils and crucibles"
until refined into a heady substance.
Victor Fet expanded
"Carolyn's Cabbalistic Equation" into "C = K = S = Z (Z for
Zembla)...Adding Cyrillic 3, we get also Pythagorean triad, the number of main
characters in PF.C = K = S = 3 = Z . And then C = K = S = 3 = Z = C
since Germanic Z is pronounced 'ts', so one goes a full zirkle."
Next,
he crowned it all: "... therefeore, K=C=Ch [via Italian] =
Sh [sound of French "ch" in English transcription] -- a shortcut from Kinbote
via Charles to Shade.This is Lewis Carroll's (=Carolus Ludovicus) word golf
expanded to characters/sounds.
So in Russian (and Zemblan??), surname Kinbote and
"Charles the Beloved" (but not Charles Kinbote!) start with the same
sound/letter K.
But I'm lost again. From C=K=S to C=K=S=Z we arrive full circle at...
C=C and K=K?
Anthony Stadlen quoted Kunin's " By coincidence (so far as I know) the
disparate sounds /k/ and /s/ are represented in the Greek and Roman alphabets as
"c", saying that he did not understand: 'In Greek k is kappa and s
is sigma. There is no "c".'
Myself, I miss how "G" was refined into "C" after
following Carolyn Kunin's initial arguments: "The index title page
tells us that the three main characters of the book are G, K, & S. After
staring at those three letters for quite some time I began to see the G as a
modified C and then the solution came to me: C = K = S."
Nabokov's "Speak, Memory" (1966 edition) also carries an Index, with proper
names set off by quotation marks.
VN tells us that "Its main purpose is to list for my convenience some of
the people and themes connected with my past years. Its presence will annoy the
vulgar but may please the discerning, if only because
Through the window of that index
Climbs a rose
And sometimes a gentle wind ex
Ponto blows."
Isn't that what VN had planned all along: inviting readers
to extend his work on and on, so that it may rise like Venus impelled on a
nacreous shell with Boreas' help?
Jansy