Subject
Re: Danish stilettto
From
Date
Body
On 1/12/06 17:25, "Penny McCarthy" <penmc@BTCONNECT.COM> wrote:
> Charles, But a bodkin is a Danish stiletto. Hamlet¹s bare bodkin¹ a dagger
> held by a Danish prince. Penny.
>
Penny/Charles: hard to determine exacly what range of implements WS and/or
his audience would have had in mind. The idea that our quietus¹ (death**)
can be achieved with a stiletto or dagger is surely a tad too obvious
(that¹s what daggers are for!), compared with the frightening notion that a
noble life can be ended with a mere (bare for alliteration!) domestic needle
or hairpin? We are back (again) to the problem of semantic spread and the
dangers of dogma.
** Irony: Hamlet¹s dad hardly enjoyed a quiet life after death!
Jansy wrote:
Someone in the know might express something like: One must read Nabokov both
sincronically and diacronically, like a person listening to myths recited by
Homeric followers. And more...read him as poet and scientist, geographer
and historian, like someone ennamoured with Vermeer and Picasso. Like
a teacher in Physics....
I prefer to read & relish VN¹s novels as the great, uniquely anti-didactic
novels they are. Full stop! I suppose the analogy with Homer¹s bards has
some weight, BUT prends garde a toi. Homer¹s audiences KNEW the characters &
endings and BELIEVED the stories; the Gods and Goddesses, mortals and semis
were REAL not mythic. This was HISTORY in the original sense of
ENTERTAINMENT. VN¹s novels also entertain (does this expose me as pre-modern
old-fashioned? Even catsarses [JJ¹s catharsis] can be diverting) after many
re-readings so, like Homer¹s original listeners, we are familiar with the
plot-twists yet delight in the re-telling and in a modern way the
characters become as real as our neighbours. For 27 UK sterling pounds, I
recently downloaded the audio-Lollita from Apple¹s iTunes (a real golden
trashery I¹ve found many of my own early vinyl, now digitised,
performances [under my nom-de-folk, Stan Kelly]) . LO is now instantly
accessible on my iPod (next to my heart-shirt-pocket) with J Irons playing
the monster. Unlike the movies, DN, this Lolita is UNabridged,
UNbowdlerised. And I hope the VN estate benefits from this downloading
technology where PIRACY prevails beyond any reasonable control. ASCAP have
not yet forwarded any rewards for my own iTunes material!
Reading VN the entomologist, physicist, theologian, logician, historian,
autobiographer, self-commentator, literary-critic, translator,
teasing-interviewee, or mathematician* is, as they say, rather OTHER.
Needless to say, the sublime style, wit and mischief shine through,
defining the eponymous, undivided monistic Nabokovian.¹
* In Speak Memory [pp 36-7], VN recalls losing his early ³abnormal aptitude
for mathematics, which I completely lost in my singularly talentless youth.
This gift played a horrible part in tussles with quinsy or scarlet fever,
when I felt enormous spheres and huge numbers swell relentlessly in my
aching brain. A foolish tutor had explained logarithms to me much too early,
and I had read (in a British publication, the Boy¹s Own Paper, I believe)
about a certain Hindu calculator who in exactly two seconds could find the
seventeenth root of, say,
3529471145760275132301897342055866171392 (I am not sure if I have got this
right; anyway the root was 212)²
WELL NOW: a quick check (log [212^17] ~= 17 x 2.3 ~= 39) indicates that VN
either remembered the plausible 40-digit number and its plausible 17th root
OR the whole sequence is a Nabokovian trick. Stay tooned as we fire up
Mathematica!
Jansy also wrote:
*It is soooo amazing, there is no precise word in English for "Sehnsucht" or
"Saudades" . Later I'll find a comment on the latter by Nabokov,
while lecturing on Cervantes.
I respond, pulling out the polished pulpit:
WHAT¹s a WORD? Harder still: What¹s a PRECISE WORD? Even harder: What¹s a
precise ENGLISH word? ³The English have no precise word for a semi-spherical
domed abode built from snow-blocks!² Of course we do! We BORROWED igloo¹
from the Inuktitut noun iglu¹ meaning house.¹ And we¹ll NEVER GIVE IT
BACK! One might as well say that the Germans had no precise WORD for
pining¹ untill they COMBINED two older roots (sehen + suchen). And so it
goes. Building and borrowing. Different languages build and invent words in
different ways. When does a PHRASE become a WORD? (Recall the polysynthetic
languages discussed here way back such as Cherokee and Inuktitut where a
word¹ can run into a sentence?¹) Who defines all those IDIOMS? Who defines
precision?¹
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
> Charles, But a bodkin is a Danish stiletto. Hamlet¹s bare bodkin¹ a dagger
> held by a Danish prince. Penny.
>
Penny/Charles: hard to determine exacly what range of implements WS and/or
his audience would have had in mind. The idea that our quietus¹ (death**)
can be achieved with a stiletto or dagger is surely a tad too obvious
(that¹s what daggers are for!), compared with the frightening notion that a
noble life can be ended with a mere (bare for alliteration!) domestic needle
or hairpin? We are back (again) to the problem of semantic spread and the
dangers of dogma.
** Irony: Hamlet¹s dad hardly enjoyed a quiet life after death!
Jansy wrote:
Someone in the know might express something like: One must read Nabokov both
sincronically and diacronically, like a person listening to myths recited by
Homeric followers. And more...read him as poet and scientist, geographer
and historian, like someone ennamoured with Vermeer and Picasso. Like
a teacher in Physics....
I prefer to read & relish VN¹s novels as the great, uniquely anti-didactic
novels they are. Full stop! I suppose the analogy with Homer¹s bards has
some weight, BUT prends garde a toi. Homer¹s audiences KNEW the characters &
endings and BELIEVED the stories; the Gods and Goddesses, mortals and semis
were REAL not mythic. This was HISTORY in the original sense of
ENTERTAINMENT. VN¹s novels also entertain (does this expose me as pre-modern
old-fashioned? Even catsarses [JJ¹s catharsis] can be diverting) after many
re-readings so, like Homer¹s original listeners, we are familiar with the
plot-twists yet delight in the re-telling and in a modern way the
characters become as real as our neighbours. For 27 UK sterling pounds, I
recently downloaded the audio-Lollita from Apple¹s iTunes (a real golden
trashery I¹ve found many of my own early vinyl, now digitised,
performances [under my nom-de-folk, Stan Kelly]) . LO is now instantly
accessible on my iPod (next to my heart-shirt-pocket) with J Irons playing
the monster. Unlike the movies, DN, this Lolita is UNabridged,
UNbowdlerised. And I hope the VN estate benefits from this downloading
technology where PIRACY prevails beyond any reasonable control. ASCAP have
not yet forwarded any rewards for my own iTunes material!
Reading VN the entomologist, physicist, theologian, logician, historian,
autobiographer, self-commentator, literary-critic, translator,
teasing-interviewee, or mathematician* is, as they say, rather OTHER.
Needless to say, the sublime style, wit and mischief shine through,
defining the eponymous, undivided monistic Nabokovian.¹
* In Speak Memory [pp 36-7], VN recalls losing his early ³abnormal aptitude
for mathematics, which I completely lost in my singularly talentless youth.
This gift played a horrible part in tussles with quinsy or scarlet fever,
when I felt enormous spheres and huge numbers swell relentlessly in my
aching brain. A foolish tutor had explained logarithms to me much too early,
and I had read (in a British publication, the Boy¹s Own Paper, I believe)
about a certain Hindu calculator who in exactly two seconds could find the
seventeenth root of, say,
3529471145760275132301897342055866171392 (I am not sure if I have got this
right; anyway the root was 212)²
WELL NOW: a quick check (log [212^17] ~= 17 x 2.3 ~= 39) indicates that VN
either remembered the plausible 40-digit number and its plausible 17th root
OR the whole sequence is a Nabokovian trick. Stay tooned as we fire up
Mathematica!
Jansy also wrote:
*It is soooo amazing, there is no precise word in English for "Sehnsucht" or
"Saudades" . Later I'll find a comment on the latter by Nabokov,
while lecturing on Cervantes.
I respond, pulling out the polished pulpit:
WHAT¹s a WORD? Harder still: What¹s a PRECISE WORD? Even harder: What¹s a
precise ENGLISH word? ³The English have no precise word for a semi-spherical
domed abode built from snow-blocks!² Of course we do! We BORROWED igloo¹
from the Inuktitut noun iglu¹ meaning house.¹ And we¹ll NEVER GIVE IT
BACK! One might as well say that the Germans had no precise WORD for
pining¹ untill they COMBINED two older roots (sehen + suchen). And so it
goes. Building and borrowing. Different languages build and invent words in
different ways. When does a PHRASE become a WORD? (Recall the polysynthetic
languages discussed here way back such as Cherokee and Inuktitut where a
word¹ can run into a sentence?¹) Who defines all those IDIOMS? Who defines
precision?¹
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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