Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0014345, Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:37:47 -0200

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Re: VN: the American and Mongrels
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When he was already an American writer... The Americanization of VN seems to me akin to the conversion of Anglo-Saxon into Old English, by the OED, in the years running up to the Great War: linguistically disreputable, and a most deplorable academic chauvinism. (quote and text by CHW)

JM: An interesting topic but my background only gives me permits to stand by and watch its colors unfurl.
I'm actually in the middle of the Amazon jungle and connections are unstable, not because of Quimboto's wizardry nor the Boto's [ a cetaceous animal, a dolphin( if not a dauphin) that metamorphoses at night into a gallant young man who impregnates young virgins who linger by the river] I had the luck to see last night, from a very safe position....
So, I have no dictionaries at hand and internet facilities are not enough to carry me along a google search.

Still on the topic raised by /SKB,/CHW,Bouazza - Dichtung & Verdichtung: I have a Nabokovian word for the same process ("condensation" as part of the dream mechanisms ).
In Bend Sinister the meaning comes under the term "Mongrel" ( when Krug criticizes the imprecisions in a document he is invited to undersign) ..." the metaphors are all mongrels " ( Freudians might agree that dreams "mongrelize" rational or conscious metaphors into a cluster of falsely connected meanings).
Later, in ADA a word reminds us of this "mongrelizing" deformity. I don't know if it has any relation with this sense in BS: what's the spelling? Transmogryph...transmongriphy?

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