M. Roth wrote: CK's "walk with S to the weedy spot where the haunted barn
once stood." Clearly, we are to notice those
weeds!
Dear MR and JF: It is
very nice to be able to follow a corteous exchange of
ideas that also enriches other participants. Thank you.
While in my still lonely path of a Bend Sinister
retake [ only CHW seems to have felt the need to return to it and check if
VN's head is domed, like Shak's ( not Bacon's) beehive forehead. By the
way, CHW, the translator here is not actually VN, but his
creature Ember, remember? Ember, of Persian ascendants and, as a
translator, one of Ali-Baba's forty thieves...]
I realized that several plants and weeds, in Ada
and BS, serve to indicate short-cuts for referencing. Thus, "A lass,
salix" ( I have not my copy of BS by me now to get all the letters right)
indicates, among other things, Ophelia and the Weeping
Willow.
Mysteriously, a loose young girl named Mariette in
BS is sometimes linked to Ophelia, to russet Lucette (russ, russet,
set and cette, lux + Boticelli), Blanche and Cinderella!
Alas, salicious? Salix, aspirin and migrainous
megrims? Ophelia as she appears in Conmal-Ember
translations?
Other free-associations:
1.I have no idea why Flaubertian
bourgeouis Houmais is connected to Hamlet in BS. I thought it was just a
passing joke, but now I'm convinced that it was not.
2. You seem to link flowering weeds,
perfumes and butterflies...
Yesterday I visited a "Borboletarium"
(Butterfly-greenhouse?) for the first time and was surrounded by flowers and
thousands of insect-petals.
I was reminded by expert companions that
many butterflies have a procreation cycle in - and enjoy visits to
- compost-heaps,garbage and dejecta.
VN would not miss an allusion to that but
I, who am not familiar either with Northern plants and
insects, was only able to recognize the sunny, honeyed references,
like most Nabokovian mentions I find here...
Jansy