Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005265, Sun, 2 Jul 2000 16:39:47 -0700

Subject
Re: Nabokov's Method of Writing and Literary Structure and
Contentof His Books (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Michael S Strickland <mstrickland@free.fr>

Ronald Firbank (1886-1926) plagiarized, by anticipation, Nabokov in at
least three ways:

1) Attended Cambridge.
2) Possessed as name a lipogram on 'e'.
3) Wrote his novels on index cards.

Despite these similarities, Firbank's novels seem quite different from
Nabokov's. But perhaps not. Across the pages of the former's "Valmouth"
(1918) flits a creature, Lady Parvula de Panzoust, apparently
congenerous with the latter's libellulish flirt, Cordula de Prey. Also
in that book (which ends, by the way, with vanessa-violets and the
pursuit of -- a butterfly) we find a curious larva hosting the imaginal
disks of H.H.'s nemesis: Quentin Comedy, Esq. Perhaps similar
curiosities await -- or have already been elucidated by -- the attentive
comparatist.