Subject
leminscate tracing
From
Date
Body
Dear List,
We all know that to read Nabokov we must either share information with specialists in various fields or be another modern Leonardo.Google resources, Yahoo, Wikipedia might get information for us when we need a quick comprehensive view.
Or else, we might be Gilbert & Sullivan's "the very model of a modern major-general": I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,/I am the very model of a modern Major-General."...
Some conclusions in our discussion may leave us a bit discomfited and, overdaring, we might play the fool ( fortunately a lot of us are not like the angels in Shade's A.Pope... and run in with a contribution) .
I would like to bring up the famous "leminscate" debate since, recently, someone described it as something preposterous like "a fiber that connects our brain to the central nervous system", amidst several technical informations about neurological diseases, brain-obfuscations and Shade's fits.
I tried to obtain more specific information ( since I remembered little of my adolescent biology) and found several interesting things ( thanks to my friend LF Gallego).
Following one text about audition and prenatal disorders, I learned that there are "electric potential waves which originate from the cochlear nucleus, the the lateral lemniscus ". An old Atlas of Anatomy described: "the internal lemniscus or Reil cluster ... ascends as a direct extension of the stratum interolivare lemnisci..."
This is way too complicated to understand VN's use of "lemniscate", but a regular dictionary of the Portuguese Language may also inform that "lemniscus" ( not a "lemniscate") applies to a bundle of fibers in the Central Nervous System that extend themselves from the sensitive nuclei of the medulla to the thalamus ( A.Houaiss).
It also applies to the ribbon that hangs from the crowns, garlands and laurels of winners, or the ribbon that adheres to diplomatic stamps. It is also a conventional old sign of "division" (dot-dash-dot) in mathematical notation.
Another dictionary ( Michaelis) informs that the "dot-dash-dot" lemniscus sign advises the readers of a mistaken translation of the Sacred Texts (Scripture) and other kinds of transpositions.
Other entries explain that, in anatomy, it names a carthilagenous disk in the knee ( football players know a lot about that!). In zoology it applies to the bags that hang at both sides of the "acanthocephalus",etc. But... following these and other dictionaries, the word "lemniscata" ( lemniscate) applies only to the ribbonlike sign in the horizontal shape of eight (infinity), although "Google" led me even further to mecatronics, physics and maths - concerning "lemniscate tracings" ...
Sometimes, like Carolyn Kunin's image of rabbit-feet poplars swaying in the wind, the simplest explanation is closer to the meaning we look for.
Sorry for my lemniscate way of going about this subject ( or, more simply: "long-winding" or "long-winded"?)
Jansy
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
We all know that to read Nabokov we must either share information with specialists in various fields or be another modern Leonardo.Google resources, Yahoo, Wikipedia might get information for us when we need a quick comprehensive view.
Or else, we might be Gilbert & Sullivan's "the very model of a modern major-general": I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,/I am the very model of a modern Major-General."...
Some conclusions in our discussion may leave us a bit discomfited and, overdaring, we might play the fool ( fortunately a lot of us are not like the angels in Shade's A.Pope... and run in with a contribution) .
I would like to bring up the famous "leminscate" debate since, recently, someone described it as something preposterous like "a fiber that connects our brain to the central nervous system", amidst several technical informations about neurological diseases, brain-obfuscations and Shade's fits.
I tried to obtain more specific information ( since I remembered little of my adolescent biology) and found several interesting things ( thanks to my friend LF Gallego).
Following one text about audition and prenatal disorders, I learned that there are "electric potential waves which originate from the cochlear nucleus, the the lateral lemniscus ". An old Atlas of Anatomy described: "the internal lemniscus or Reil cluster ... ascends as a direct extension of the stratum interolivare lemnisci..."
This is way too complicated to understand VN's use of "lemniscate", but a regular dictionary of the Portuguese Language may also inform that "lemniscus" ( not a "lemniscate") applies to a bundle of fibers in the Central Nervous System that extend themselves from the sensitive nuclei of the medulla to the thalamus ( A.Houaiss).
It also applies to the ribbon that hangs from the crowns, garlands and laurels of winners, or the ribbon that adheres to diplomatic stamps. It is also a conventional old sign of "division" (dot-dash-dot) in mathematical notation.
Another dictionary ( Michaelis) informs that the "dot-dash-dot" lemniscus sign advises the readers of a mistaken translation of the Sacred Texts (Scripture) and other kinds of transpositions.
Other entries explain that, in anatomy, it names a carthilagenous disk in the knee ( football players know a lot about that!). In zoology it applies to the bags that hang at both sides of the "acanthocephalus",etc. But... following these and other dictionaries, the word "lemniscata" ( lemniscate) applies only to the ribbonlike sign in the horizontal shape of eight (infinity), although "Google" led me even further to mecatronics, physics and maths - concerning "lemniscate tracings" ...
Sometimes, like Carolyn Kunin's image of rabbit-feet poplars swaying in the wind, the simplest explanation is closer to the meaning we look for.
Sorry for my lemniscate way of going about this subject ( or, more simply: "long-winding" or "long-winded"?)
Jansy
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