Dear List,
There were various intriguing items in
the Wikipedia when I clicked a search
for Ada's Latin name for "Peterson's grouse."
'Might I
have another helping of Peterson's Grouse, Tetrastes bonasia windriverensis?'
asked Ada loftily.
( Darkbloom registers in his notes:
Tetrastes etc.: Latin name of the imaginary 'Peterson's Grouse' from Wind River
Range, Wyo.)
I discovered that there's a book,
"Birds of the World - current valid scientific avian names,"
written by Alan P. Peterson, that served as a reference for the
avian "Bonasa/Tetrastes." Would Nabokov
have read it, and why did he give a special place to it in ADA? There are two other intriguing elements in this
"grouse" chapter : a reference to "knees", the other to
"fakery".
Before Ada demands a second helping of the special
dish, we read: "Ada returned to her seat. Van picked up
her napkin from under her chair and in the course of his brief plunge and ascent
brushed the side of her knee with his temple." In the sentence that
follows Ada's request, there's a cow-bell** jangled
by Marina to call in the butler. However this
bell "was merely one of those sweet-sounding
translations which reveal a paraphrast's crass counterfeit as soon as you look
up the original." (the original bell relates to Dr.Lapiner, and
to baby Van).
When the name Peterson is mentioned again, a knee-cap
also enters the scene, now to save Van from an
inconvenient seminal emission: "no furtive fiction could compete with what awaited him in Ada's
bower. A twinge in his kneecap also came to the rescue, and honest Van chided
himself for having attempted to use a little pauper instead of the princess in
the fairy tale - 'whose precious flesh must not blush with the impression of a
chastising hand,' says Pierrot in Peterson's version."
Perhaps there is something related to fakeries, pointing
backwards on a blank page, moving from Ada onto Pale
Fire? Pheasant, grouse, winter, China and Hazel are elements that
appear when we search for "Bonasa" and they are also to be found in "Pale
Fire":
"whose spurred feet have crossed/ From left to
right the blank page of the road?/ Reading from left to right in winter’s
code:... A pheasant’s feet!/ Torquated beauty, sublimated grouse,/ Finding your
China right behind my house." ***
What fakery is announced by Shade's "torquated beauty" (a Hazel
grouse?) and Ada's second helping which became an
incongruous saucisson (and the erotic mirroring by Ada and her father while
eating asparragus? ), or Peterson's version of Pierrot's words?
...........................................................................................................
* - Wiki: Bonasa (Tetrastes
- Keyserling & J. H. Blasius, 1840).
Bonasa is a genus of birds in
the grouse subfamily. It contains three species: Hazel Grouse( Bonasa bonasia),
Severtzov's Grouse( Bonasa sewerzowi), Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus).
All
three live in forests with at least some conifers in cool regions of the
Northern Hemisphere. The two Old World species, the Hazel Grouse of northern
Eurasia and Severtzov's Grouse of mountains in central China, are particularly
closely related and are sometimes separated as a genus Tetrastes. The Ruffed
Grouse lives in the northern United States and southern Canada.
** Bonasa is derived from bonasus, Latin for the
European Bison, from Ancient Greek bonasos (βονασος), apparently because the
drumming sounds these birds make were thought to resemble the bellowing of
bovines (wiki). Marina's cow-bell is not an innocent detail, if it
rings for more "bonasa"...
.
***I also found images of grouses described as: Chinese Grouse,
Severtzov's Hazel Grouse, Chinese Hazel Grouse, Severtsov's Grouse, Sewerzow's
Grouse, Black-breasted Hazel Grouse.