Stan K-B [Re-VN’s “wod”]: those of us
exposed to Chaucer from early boyhood ...are familiar with “wood” meaning “mad,
enraged.” ...I share your doubts re-PM’s flamboyant
extrapolations...[Re-ref. to Kinbote’s comment on razors and his possible sexual
inuendo against Shade.] Rather puzzling, unless deliberately anachronistic, is
CK’s use of “ordinary razor” in contrast to an “ancient Gillette.”... What, if
any, are the sexual indications of the Gillette? E.g., Weak, sissy (homosexual)?
Or, as we continue to stretch things, Bi-blade -> BI-sexual?
JM: I thought malice had no
boundaries. Gillette in Brazilian slang
suggests that the blade's two options are used, no
matter which ( ie bisexuality).
Perhaps in some other countries,such as
France?, it is equally applied in its two-edged acception.
I only remembered our slang while musing on
your reference to "left:sinister", since it led me to the word
"ambidextrous" (agility, adroitness, dexterity). Alexey's example [dva sapoga
para i oba na levuyu nogu (literally: "the two boots that make a pair
and both are for the left foot").] offers an additional complicator A clumsy
person's "two left-hands" would become twice
as difficult with "two left-feet" to move
about.
I hadn't considered Meyer's words as
being extrapolational (or extrapolatory?) until now, because
she'd specified that (SWSHH,p.72) 'Nabokov connects Kinbote's
homosexual activities and madness to this report [the anedocte about
Eadbald] through the Anglo-Saxon word "wod", "mad" or
"frenzied".' - for I found no other indication
about where, in VN's oeuvre, this connection is described -
except by Kinbote's use of "wodnaggen", as she'd
indicated (note to lines 47-48).