Most plausible, Hafid.
May I take this opportunity to correct Alexey un p’tit peu? True that Gypsy (aka Gitano, Zingari ...) and Bohemian share some semantic overlap. But misleading to call them synonyms. The Gypsy cognates, such as Romany, Tinker and Traveler, have only remote metaphorical links with the artistic free spirits following La Vie Boheme (as portrayed by Pavarotti and Dmitri Nabokov!)
Cripple is one of many formerly-factual words that has become tagged as Offensive, especially in the UK. I would welcome the forum’s views on whether VN’s Cripple seems deliberately cruel, or accepted ‘neutral’ usage in Lolita’s America? As recently as the 1970s I used to drive past a warning sign near a San Francisco Shriners Hospital: Danger, Cripples Crossing. Many years earlier, I met a boogie-woogie pianist in New Orleans called Cripple Clarence Lofton. All of which proves that Political Correctness is mighty volatile.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 19/06/2011 22:02, "Hafid Bouazza" <hafidbouazza@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
Concerning the gambling involved and implied, is it not also a wordplay with the slotmachine, a one-armed bandit, I wonder?
Best,
Hafid Bouazza
2011/6/19 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
lexey Sklyarenko: [At Marina's funeral] D'Onsky's son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines. (Ada: 3.8)... Soon after his arrival in Kishinev ...Pushkin met Alexander Ypsilanti ... a Phanariot who served in the Russian army and lost his right arm in the Battle of Dresden (1813). Pushkin mentions įåēšóźčé źķ’ēü (one-armed prince) in a poem written in Kishinev (c. Apr. 5, 1821) and addressed to Vasiliy Davydov ..."
JM: There's also a one-armed man in "Lolita," Bill, a friend of the Schillers, inserted during Humbert Humbert's and Lolita's last encounter. Through the image of deformity Nabokov makes a reference to surrealism and pointillism: "He nursed his glass and, nodding sagely, replied: "Well, he cut it on a jagger, I guess. Lost his right arm in Italy." Lovely mauve almond trees in bloom. A blown-off surrealistic arm hanging up there in the pointillistic mauve. A flowergirl tattoo on the hand. Dolly and band-aided Bill reappeared. It occurred to me that her ambiguous, brown and pale beauty excited the cripple."