A.Sklyarenko: A short addendum to my "leporine" article in Zembla: Not everybody whose name is Krolik ("rabbit") belongs
to the leporine family... Dr Krolik's brother in Ada, Karol, or
Karapars, Krolik, a doctor of philosophy, born in Turkey, isn't a rabbit, but
rather a black panther... It seems that he, not Van, was Ada's
first lover...Ada must be thinking of him when she complains,
after their violent love-making, that Van hurt her "like a tiger
Turk" (2.8).
David Krol: Krol also means king on Polish. It is kral
in Czech (I am an American currently living in Prague...). It is also my
understanding that Krol comes from all those words like Caesar, Kaiser, Tsar,
Karl, Charles, Carol, etc.
JM: Is there
a relation bt. this Karapars Krolik (panther, tiger Turk) and the burning
barn sentence when Van was "pushing against
her like that soldier behind in the queue.// First time I hear about him. I
thought old Mr Nymphobottomus had been my only predecessor//.Last spring. Trip
to town. French theater matinée."? I missed this point
altogether.
When I first read Alexey's post, I was reminded
of Blake's Tyger (in particular: "Did he smile his work to see?//Did he who
made the Lamb make thee?"), in which the predator stands for "evil" in
contrast to the innocent sacrificial "lamb". Might the poor rabbits,
suffering under the spell of a serpent (as it was explained by Appel's note
in connection to Humbert Humbert's serpent-like powers of seduction) be in
any way related to wooly defenceless lambs?
After David Krol's additional
information on Krol, Karl, Charles, Kaiser and the Polish word for king (
with the "restoration theme" and various King Charlesses) I started to
wonder if, in a clumsily devious way, the leporines would indicate the
theme of fallen kings or czars... (And yet, the links which he offers
for Krol, Karl and Kaiser don't seem to be
etymologically orthodox, or are they? Names are problematic (
Levy-Strauss stated that their etymologies cannot be established) but otherwise
they are a rich source of displacements and puns. As Nabokov once
acknowledged in Ada: "tropes are the dreams of
language." (and here he sides with Lacan!)