DZ: ..."PF commentary.Indeed I
tried to be succinct. I simply had to because my appendix as it is occupies more
than 200 pages and is almost as long as the novel itself, much too long for an
edition meant not for scholars but for the general reading public. As to line
238-46, it is true that in my note I spelt La Fontaine the way he is spelled in
the catalogues of the Bibliothèque Francaise [...] And after all, I never
intended to deprive my fellow commentators of future work."
JM: Dear
D.Zimmer: "Tatsächtlich", your objective way of
proffering complex information and organizing excerpts is
inspiring because it highlights events to which I'd been blind without
"depriving" me of a sense of personal discovery.
I have one or two questions.
(1) When you observed that "La
Fontaine irrte", in your commentary, you used a different
expression from the one chosen for the poem ( Shade's "Lafontaine was wrong"/"La Fontaine
lag falsch"): did you have any particular indication in mind
concerning "irrte/lag falsch"?
(2) I understood, from your notes, that VN had
coined the word "ombriole" ( joining shadow + aureole)
for Joe Lavender's "photographs of the artistic
type" ..."lampshades with landscapes...which combined
exquisite beauty with highly indecent subject matter."
Don Johnson once
brought up news on photographic plates that show objects
which "shine through" in three dimensions - but I cannot remember
their (Greek?) designation now, nor can I be more precise about this
past information. And yet,
I connected
your "shadowy aureole" to DJ's find, and to the transparencies mentioned
in your quote [VN-List, January 06,
2009 : "Nabokov said: " in certain species, the wings of
the pupated butterfly begin to show in exquisite miniature through the
wing-cases of the chrysalis a few days before emergence. It is the pathetic
sight of an iridiscent future transpiring through the shell of the past,
something of the kind I experience when dipping into my books written in the
twenties." (Int18 123)"]
There is a more utilitarian,
albeit non-luminous derivation for VN's coinage of "ombriole"
- such as the English "umbrella". Isn't
this size-indicator by "ole" or "ella" an
option commonly favored by biologists (as in
"flagella")?
Do you see this ombriole's very suggestive "aureole" as
a creation that is independent from the influence of an "ella"
diminutive?
(3) After I read (with my insufficient knowledge of
German) your comments about Michael Wood on "authorial
trespassing" and also on Kinbote's indiscretions in his role as a
fictional scholar, I wondered how should I designate CK's
omniscience about Gradus together with his revelation, at that point
in his notes, about his being on familiar terms with Joe Lavender
[ "the ombrioles Lavender collected (and I
am sure Joe will not resent this indiscretion) ..."]