Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019309, Tue, 2 Feb 2010 16:05:45 -0200

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Re: ADA's L disaster
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A.Sklyarenko:..." On Antiterra, where they have Log instead of Bog (Russian for "God")..." Russian for "liar" is лгун, or лжец...the often repeated words of a character in Chekhov's story My Life: Тля ест траву, ржа - железо, а лжа - душу ("Lice eat grass, rust eats iron, and lying the soul!"). Speaking of iron, here is some alchemy for you: железо + лото = желе + золото (железо means "iron," лото "lotto," желе "jelly," золото "gold").

JM: By coincidence, Mr. Plunkett's alchemical ennumeration includes the word "jelly," A.S. just brought up, the gooey substance of ectoplasmatic mediunic manifestations. However, in his sentence, for me, the key-word lies in "exposure" lying close to Russian "sleeve-racks" (perhaps "rubber gloves", too?)

I always thought that Antiterran "Log" indicated the Greek supreme "Logus," to be distinguished from "Bogus."

Joining in the play with signifiers and chance, and returning to rankling "draoncle," drowning Lucette, Tobakoff sailors and weeds, wiki informs: "In former times, Kraut was used as a colloquial expression for tobacco... Today it is sometimes used for marijuana a.k.a "weed". Kraut may have been used as a term for German sailors, who carried Sauerkraut on board in an effort to battle scurvy...The practice was comparable to the British Royal Navy's consumption of limes, which earned British sailors the nickname 'Limey'."



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btw: Wiki-googling is most unfair, but marvellous. Lucette's unremembered "myosotis" (forget-me-nots) derives this name from the Greek for "mouse-eared"( a return to Dan's "rodends"?) Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mouse-ear forget-me-not, Myosotis laxa, has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending; even flowers must be modest." Thoreau, Henry David; Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1884), The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, p. 109, http://books.google.com/books/

Another flower, of the "ramping" kind like the Krolikcrawling larvae, comes close to the "triple viol" with interesting tidbits:
"Heartsease" (Viola tricolor), a small plant of creeping and ramping habit...it has a long history of use in herbalism. Long before cultivated pansies were released into the trade in 1839, Heartsease was associated with thought in the "language of flowers", often by its alternative name of pansy (from the French "pensee" - thought): hence Ophelia's often quoted line in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts". What Shakespeare had in mind was Heartsease, not a modern garden pansy.Shakespeare makes a more direct reference, probably to Heartsease in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon sends Puck to gather "a little western flower" that maidens call "Love-in-idleness". Oberon's account is that he diverted an arrow from Cupid's bow aimed at "a fair vestal, throned by the west" (supposedly Queen Elizabeth I) to fall upon the plant "before milk-white, now purple with love's wound". The "imperial vot'ress" passes on "fancy-free", destined never to fall in love. The juice of the heartsease now, claims Oberon, "on sleeping eyelids laid, Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees." Equipped with such powers, Oberon and Puck control the fates of various characters in the play to provide Shakespeare's essential dramatic and comic structure for the play.

Thyme brings another amusing link, passing through Scarborough fair, Elfin Knights and herbal refrains:
"Scarborough Fair" appears to derive from an older (and now obscure) Scottish ballad, The Elfin Knight (Child Ballad #2), which has been traced at least as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task ("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he"); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform ("I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand"). As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten...The references to "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" date to nineteenth century versions, and the refrain may have been borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has a similar plot...Much thought has gone into attempts to explain the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme"...The oldest versions of "The Elfin Knight" (circa 1650) contain the refrain "my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall not blow my plaid away" (or variations thereof), which may reflect the original emphasis on the lady's chastity.

Scrambling letters, from Kurland to the Kuriles, instead of finding poor Onkel Ruka, I came to Kur in Sumerian mythology, "a monstrous demon personifying the home of the dead, Hell, the "river of the dead" (see also Styx), and the void space between the primeval sea (Abzu) and the earth (Ma)."

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