Sklyarenko: May I shift, after the
lively debate over PALE FIRE, to ADA? "Van's maternal grandmother Daria
("Dolly") Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras
d'Or, an American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated
country..." (1.1). Bras d'Or ("arm of gold") is the name of [...] Victor
Fet pointed out to me that labra (pl. of labrum, Latin for "lip") was an
entomological term, meaning "part of the mouth of an arthropod". Victor noted
that there was labra in "Labrador", "Calabria" (region in S Italy; cf.
mysterious "Gypsy politicians or Calabrian laborers" who appear at the picnic in
Ardis the Second: 1.39), and palabra (Spanish for "word"; pah, pronounced rather
like palabra's first syllable, is Ada's beloved expletive and the first word
that Van hears her say: 1.5)...We have thus bridged, in only three paragraphs,
several places in different parts of both our world and Demonia (aka Antiterra,
Earth's twin planet, on which ADA is set), including the river that flows in
Nabokov's (and mine) home city. May be, my "anagramatic" method is worth
anything, after all? May be, a € million? :)
JM: Bras d'Or: French
cognac;
Labrador: labourer (almost an anagram);
Libra: "balance = scale", related to caliber.
Libra-balance- Bilanz=accounting, balance sheet.
Libra=British Pound.
Why not accept, instead of a € million, its
equivalent in pounds? Your anagramatic method is informative and quite
fascinating, difficult to emmulate ands worth its weight in gold, euros,
pounds.
C.Kunin [to Jansy,Besides all the JG
initials I realized a kind of Kinbote/Botkin play with initials. John Shade and
Samuel Johnson are JS and SJ. I don't know if this has been
mentioned before] I don't recall that anyone noticed this before - - I hadn't.
Congs![...] You asked why I called John Shade the "anti-John the Revelator" - -
because he hides so much and reveals so little.
JM: Anti-John, the Revelator...(that's
as good an inversion as KC's). Is it because he reveals so
little, like a revolutionary revelatory Anti-Terra either
reveals or unveils Terra?