Next I remembered the debates about Nikto, Botkin and Kinbote and
something even stranger occurred to me. In "Ada," the name Tobak(off)
is mentioned close to Nicot (tobacco and nicotine) but, if I remember it
correctly, although a historical explorer named Nicot has
been traced, there was still no Tobak(off). In the midst of these shifts, I
saw Nikto/Nicot and, rather
distantly, Tobak/Cabot/Kinbote (now mingling,
irregularly, Nicot-Tobak).
Btw: There was a Lowell astronomer who drew canals in Mars before his
output was diagnosed as an eye-disease.** But...Really!!!!! That's too
fantastic a collage... My conclusion is that the quatrain, although
its two lines fit in connection to the Lowell family, cannot have
been intended as a satire on the poet.
There must be something else going
on, something influenced by issues as those found in the
Kabotchnik/Cabot debates, the "aristocratic Bostonians" and their European
ancestors.
..................................................................................................................................................................
*- The date (1923) is too early to suppose
that Nabokov could have read the Time article where the matter has
been brought up. However this issue echoed for a long time and
deserved the attention of the media, perhaps up to the present day (at
least, I gather that the "Open Book" news at the Harvard site, are relatively
new?).
"TIME brings all things." Monday, Aug. 27, 1923 Read
more:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,716479,00.html#ixzz0v2z1wYrc
"The
idea of spurious Cabots is as disturbing as the thought of counterfeit antiques
in the Metropolitan Museum."
Journals everywhere printed the time-honored
quatrain:
"Then here's to the City of Boston,
The home of the bean and
the cod,
Where Cabots speak only to Lowells,
And the Lowells speak only to
God."
Kabotchnik v. Cabot: "Husband-and-wife
team Justin Kaplan '45, G '47, and Anne Bernays have written a funny,
fascinating, and important book, The Language of Names (Simon & Schuster,
$25), that makes the case--through a mass of engaging detail--that our names are
consequential, that they can shape our lives. We needn't stick with the names we
are given, of course. In their chapter "Names in the Melting Pot," the authors
write of immigrants recasting themselves with "simplified or normalized names."
[...]A New York Times editorial suggested that the
Cabots might better have followed the example of certain medieval lords of the
manor who permitted and even encouraged peasants to borrow their "lofty names."
An editorial in American Hebrew deplored the loss of "Kabotchnik with its
rich, sneezing tonal effects." The most enduring comment, however, parodied the
familiar toast:
And this is good old Boston,
The home of
the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells have no one to talk
to
Since the Cabots speak Yiddish, by God. "
** - copied from:http://www.doesgodexist.org/SepOct04/LowellsSyndrome.html
"At the turn of the century, the world's
most distinguished astronomer was certain there were canals on Mars. Sir
Percival Lowell, esteemed for his study of the solar system, had a particular
fascination with the Red Planet. .. 1877, Lowell heard that an Italian
astronomer had seen straight lines crisscrossing the Martian surface. Lowell
spent the rest of his years squinting into the eyepiece of his giant telescope
in Arizona, mapping the channels and canals he saw. He was convinced the canals
were proof of intelligent life on Mars, possibly an older but wiser race than
humanity. Lowell's observations gained wide acceptance. So eminent was he, none
dared contradict him. ..Now, of course, things are different. Space probes have
orbited Mars and landed on its surface. The entire planet has been mapped, and
no one has seen a canal. How could Lowell have seen so much that was not there?
...Two possibilities: (1) he so wanted to see canals that he did, over and over
again, and (2) we know now that he suffered from a rare eye disease that made
him see the blood vessels in his own eyes. The Martian canals he saw were
nothing more than the bulging veins of his eyeballs. Today the malady is known
as "Lowell's syndrome." ...
The term "Lowell's syndrome" has been extended in
the fields of psychology and theology to include 'seeing what one wants to
see'... Lowell's Syndrome is not the result of 'seeing' blood vessels, it is the
result of the image processing capability of the eye/brain system. In effect,
discrete blobs in the visual field are joined up by straight lines; this is a
visual artefact. I encountered this effect on occasion as a professional
microscopist, teaching the principles of quantitative microscopy. (mckeonj in
Fovea thread in F Series Talk) ...I take it the 'straight line' effect is caused
by the brain's extrapolation of points to create a 'model' of lines as a way of
reducing the amount of data it has to process? (Southpaw)
"