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Re: [NABOKOV-L] [THOUGHTS] refrain quatrain in CK notes
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On 07/03/2008 15:03, "Jansy" <jansy@TERRA.COM.BR> wrote:
> 2. CK Line 957: Night Rote
> I remember one little poem from Night Rote (meaning "the nocturnal sound of
> the sea") that happened to be my first contact with the American poet
> Shade....
> If CK is writing in America and in English why would he need to offer a
> translation of Shade's "Rote" as the nocturnal sound of the sea.
> The only dictionary I have by me now explains "learning by rote" (of doubtful
> etymology) as being linked to memorizing without comprehension... Perhaps
> this word refers to the see in VN's favorite Webster... or are we here
> confronted with another sample of CK's meddling, now to insinuate that the
> word used by Shade is in Zemblan?
> I hope those in the know will clarify me about this point.
> "Night Rote" ( Rote, in German, means red, redness)
Jansy: what's hard for any writer to fathom [!] is whether the reader is as
familiar as the writer with a word's range of meanings. In the case of
"rote," I can assure you that without CK's gloss, I and most "native"
Anglophones would not have associated "rote" with the "sound of the sea." As
others have reported, that meaning seems to be from a rather localized
dialect. A dozen arcane meanings for "rote" have also been noted here,
rarely found in everyday discourse.
But, here's the key point: _without_ CK's en passant definition, few, if any
Anglophones would rush to look up "rote" in the dictionary! We all _know_
the "standard" meaning, and it makes reasonable sense in the context of a
_poem_ titled "Night Rote." We may well ponder plausibly, poetically about
nights spent "by rote," that is, habitually and mechanically, uncreatively
and so on. We may even smile at the possible pun on "Wrote" (there was a
Portuguese [!] guide to "English as She is Wrote [by Rote?]"). A few readers
might, as you mention, also note the German meaning (echoes, who knows, of
"Red Sky at Night, Sailors' Delight") but lacking the poem's content, we
would press on with an open, unbothered mind. It's the very fact of CK's
parenthetical detour that has us bothered. But not for long! Good Nabokovian
re-readers will be moved to check whether CK is teasing us or not*
* WHAT IF, a draft of Shade's "Night Rote" turns up on a damp card?
By ocean lip the waters lap;
An ancient violin is heard
By rote repeating endless crap ...
For our Webstering, web-steering pains, we add another semantic gem to our
limited vocabulary: may it one day reach VN's astonishing mastery.
What is beyond reasonable resolution, I believe, is speculating whether CK
or Shade or VN (granting them distinct existences) needed to look up "rote"
in a dictionary. Fun, perhaps, but essentially undecidable. We each acquire
our stock of words in diverse, uncharted ways.
Stan Kelly-Bootle (1929 - ?)
ACM's designated Curmudgeon
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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> 2. CK Line 957: Night Rote
> I remember one little poem from Night Rote (meaning "the nocturnal sound of
> the sea") that happened to be my first contact with the American poet
> Shade....
> If CK is writing in America and in English why would he need to offer a
> translation of Shade's "Rote" as the nocturnal sound of the sea.
> The only dictionary I have by me now explains "learning by rote" (of doubtful
> etymology) as being linked to memorizing without comprehension... Perhaps
> this word refers to the see in VN's favorite Webster... or are we here
> confronted with another sample of CK's meddling, now to insinuate that the
> word used by Shade is in Zemblan?
> I hope those in the know will clarify me about this point.
> "Night Rote" ( Rote, in German, means red, redness)
Jansy: what's hard for any writer to fathom [!] is whether the reader is as
familiar as the writer with a word's range of meanings. In the case of
"rote," I can assure you that without CK's gloss, I and most "native"
Anglophones would not have associated "rote" with the "sound of the sea." As
others have reported, that meaning seems to be from a rather localized
dialect. A dozen arcane meanings for "rote" have also been noted here,
rarely found in everyday discourse.
But, here's the key point: _without_ CK's en passant definition, few, if any
Anglophones would rush to look up "rote" in the dictionary! We all _know_
the "standard" meaning, and it makes reasonable sense in the context of a
_poem_ titled "Night Rote." We may well ponder plausibly, poetically about
nights spent "by rote," that is, habitually and mechanically, uncreatively
and so on. We may even smile at the possible pun on "Wrote" (there was a
Portuguese [!] guide to "English as She is Wrote [by Rote?]"). A few readers
might, as you mention, also note the German meaning (echoes, who knows, of
"Red Sky at Night, Sailors' Delight") but lacking the poem's content, we
would press on with an open, unbothered mind. It's the very fact of CK's
parenthetical detour that has us bothered. But not for long! Good Nabokovian
re-readers will be moved to check whether CK is teasing us or not*
* WHAT IF, a draft of Shade's "Night Rote" turns up on a damp card?
By ocean lip the waters lap;
An ancient violin is heard
By rote repeating endless crap ...
For our Webstering, web-steering pains, we add another semantic gem to our
limited vocabulary: may it one day reach VN's astonishing mastery.
What is beyond reasonable resolution, I believe, is speculating whether CK
or Shade or VN (granting them distinct existences) needed to look up "rote"
in a dictionary. Fun, perhaps, but essentially undecidable. We each acquire
our stock of words in diverse, uncharted ways.
Stan Kelly-Bootle (1929 - ?)
ACM's designated Curmudgeon
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm