Jerry Friedman to DBJ: ..."
Americans have miscalled some trees "cedars", notably junipers.... See Brian
Boyd's book, or my post of April 26, 1998 entitled "Cedars and waxwings in PALE
FIRE ." Taxonomic trivia: I was brought up to believe that the Atlas Cedar and
the Lebanon Cedar were separate species, but as your quote noted, some
authorities consider them conspecific.
JM to JF and DBJ: VN might probably have had two
things up his sleeve: (a) In his text (not included in "Dar") on "Father's
Butteflies" his character ridiculed taxonomic procedures.He might
have mentioned various Cedars, with their different weeping atlantic
indications to puzzle his readers; (b) Living in South America I'm more
acquainted with tropical forests (in which thousands of plants elbow away
one another) than with conifers. Pine-trees grow in orderly fashion
and the acidness of their needles is deterrent to biodiversity.They
are "totalitarian"?
JF to
JM: ..."the matter of cardinal importance I had in mind is Russia and
nostalgia ("ex Ponto").
JM: Imho, the subject Russia (= childhood, not
only cultura or language) and nostalgia are more than of "cardinal importance",
they are part of VN's "symptom" ( sould, style)
JF to
Charles: [ Is Richard Brodie a
computer?] I doubt it, but he uses a free computer program called Anagram
Artist. Maybe someone should suggest that someone try to anagram a long
passage of Bloodmark.
JM to the List: Why not anagram certain
lines in "PF"? I tried line 1 (and 1000?) to find special hints ending with
"pain". I got words like "swing","hand","fox","wind" but didn't get very far.
Perhaps if I knew hout to use this "Anagram Artist" I might come up with a
new proposition for line 1000...
JF to Carolyn [How about with
an example of a parallel coincidence (combined with venting one of my minor
idees fixes)?] " There are very few other novels that contain an
index. The most notable, I think, is /The Lord of the Rings/....Isildur
refers to the One Ring...as /weregild/ for his father. Tolkien,as an
Anglo-Saxon scholar, of course knew "kinbote" as another way to say that.We also
find dwarves, elves,(alfear), a versipel...and a lot of rhymed poetry of
doubtful quality...
I admit that I have no idea whether VN read /The Lord of
the Rings/...I would bet that for every link to J&H you can come up with,
one could find a link to LOTR--or to many other books...So I have no trouble
believing in such coincidences.
JM to JF: From
African folclore to Brazil came a kingly figure as a "bot" (
ambassator, sometimes representative of converted African Kings, such as Afonso
I - - and probably not the Alphonse I mentioned in Ada), associated with what in
other cultures is "weregild". In his retinue we find a wizard ( with powers
to ressurect fallen warriors) named "Quimboto".
Bobolinks and
Googlelinks: JSTOR: Gourds and Castanets: The
African Finger in Modern Spain ...-The foreman fetched the necromancer,
Quimboto, who deployed all his wizardy and incantations to revive the stricken
mameto...jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992...;
Musica dei Popoli: Il mameto, che
muore nel combattimento, viene poi risuscitato dal quimboto (stregone)... www.musicadeipopoli.com/index.php?mdp/area10/art195
Like JF, I have no trouble believing in such coincidences, but I still think VN
didn't choose "Kinbote" at
random.
Arne H. Petersen to the List: in...August 12, 2003 the subject of VN's use of
"Danish" came up, and a list poster wrote: I wonder what kind of Danish
Nabokov spoke... To this I would add that "Danish" is imprecise of
VN..."Joekel", Old Norse and modern Icelandic, definitely means "glacier".There
are mountains in Iceland incorporating the word. There are no mountains or
glaciers of any sort in Denmark. R.L.Stevenson might have had Hyde's hairiness
in mind. Dr Jekyll was perhaps a rather glacial sort of fellow....
JM: Both Kinbote and Shade were kind of hairy and, who
knows, might have a heart of ice...
Charles
to the List: "Bodkin"
..."etymologically speaking, a uniquely English word, deriving its sense from
"little body".If you search hard and long, you will eventually find English
dictionary definitions for it... These would in part appear to be influenced by
Shakepeare's use of the word....Shakespeare's employment of "bodkin", in
Hamlet's "bare bodkin", is to exploit its distinctive difference ...an object
which would more properly belong in a woman's sewing-basket. Hamlet is dwelling
on its insignifance, even feebleness... The "bot(e)" in "Kinbote" primarily
means "remedy". Specifically, it could mean "cure", eg of an illness; or
"penance/penalty"; eg a fine for some breach of the law...
JM to CK: As Charles
pointed out, words are not as docile as we want them to be. They often they mean
more than we originally intended them to mean... VN could not foresee the
significance that would be attached to his choice of the name "Kinbote."
JM: I mean "significance" ( pointing to a
"signifier")