Subject
Botkin, Catkin, Ament and Netherlands...
From
Date
Body
Pale Fire, lines 965/8:
..."Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained/ And a brown ament, and the nount I meant
To use but did not, dry on the cement" ...
The Brazilian translation of Pale Fire has the verses containing "ament" suggest something different from a specific characteristic flowering in a plant ( namely, catkin), although consonant with other, distinct, references made earlier in the poem. In Portuguese "ament" became "semente" ( seed ), a dried seed shrivelling on "cement" ( Cf. Aunt Maud's leaf-sarcophagus and dried up cocoon!).
I'm certain that Nabokov must have had, at least at the back of his mind, the word "ament" as related to the existing pathology: "a-mentia" ( the particle "a" indicates "absence" and "ment" refers to "mind" ). The sentence speaks of "drained brain and brown ament".
Still, "ament", as it is used in this verse, literally means "catkin" ( bisexual "Botkins" lurking somewhere, too?) but they also slide towards the netherlands ( not Holland, certainly) as ' "Amentet" ( or "Ament"), patron of the gates of the underworld, a woman dressed in the robes of a queen": Here Ament is the consort of Aken and she greets the souls of the newly dead, offering them bread and water. Just like our poet, newly dead some thirty lines later...
So much for Shade's "fantastically planned/ Richly rhymed life"!
Wikipedia informs: Catkins, or aments, are slim, cylindrical flower clusters, wind-pollintated and without petals, that can be found in many plant families.They contain unisexual flowers. Often one plant has only male catkins, while another has female, but it is also possible for a plant to contain both male and female catkins. Oak, birch, willow, alder and poplar are catkin-bearing.
In Brazil we have a plant named "rabo de gato" ( cat-tail), that has an inflorescence similar in shape to the Catkin's.
Its scientific name name is Acalypha reptans ( Euphorbiaceae,Angiospermae).
Another coincidence would hint that "kin" ( in Botkin) might have some kind of link with "tail" ( queue, cue).
Jansy
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