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Re: CHW to Jansy
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CHW wrote: "Oh dear. I fear that the nuances of conversation do not travel easily across the ether, nor do attempts at wit..."
Strangely enough, so it is!
Actually, I only realized quite recently that one man's joke is another man's ...whatever. Until then I tended to view jokes as pertaining to "universals". The apprehension of nuances depends on shared cultural references or experiences, but these are not enough. A different syntax, distinct taboos may nip any budding understanding.
CHW recited an anticipation of Kinbote and even Conmal's poetic renderings, but these lines almost foresaw the quote I'd have liked add to my posting on "otherwordly logic", but the meaning I searched for was far (or so I hope) from the hallucinatory tempests one may also read in these lines:
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
CHW: Why, in English, does womb rhyme with tomb? I really don't know if VN read Carlyle or Bartlett --- probably. He seems to have read everybody.
JM: The succession of Bartlett's quotes from Carlyle came to my attention because they seemed to follow a line of Nabokovian themes, but I must have been wrong.
CHW: [Schopenhauer was not another Will so... is the name Arthur also used euphemistically?] Schopenhauer wrote The World as Will and Idea, 1818. See W.Wallace, no relation, Schopenhauer, 1890.
JM: Ah, that kind of Will...
CHW: Partridge wrote Shakespeare's Bawdy. A sudden thought: does that apostrophe s indicate a genitive or an elision?
JM: Is Eric Naiman present to comment on that?
CHW: Another thought: the delightful and affectionate account of the life, career and poetic offerings of Edsel Ford, The Ozarks Poet, here, as posted earlier... which I have just been reading more attentively, persuades me Ford was, indeed, very much in VN's mind at the time he was bodying forth Pale Fire... I must suppress all these burrs. Apologies to all those who feel annoyed.
JM: Should we believe you sound sufficiently contrite? Thank heavens, no ( Imho).
Jansy
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Strangely enough, so it is!
Actually, I only realized quite recently that one man's joke is another man's ...whatever. Until then I tended to view jokes as pertaining to "universals". The apprehension of nuances depends on shared cultural references or experiences, but these are not enough. A different syntax, distinct taboos may nip any budding understanding.
CHW recited an anticipation of Kinbote and even Conmal's poetic renderings, but these lines almost foresaw the quote I'd have liked add to my posting on "otherwordly logic", but the meaning I searched for was far (or so I hope) from the hallucinatory tempests one may also read in these lines:
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
CHW: Why, in English, does womb rhyme with tomb? I really don't know if VN read Carlyle or Bartlett --- probably. He seems to have read everybody.
JM: The succession of Bartlett's quotes from Carlyle came to my attention because they seemed to follow a line of Nabokovian themes, but I must have been wrong.
CHW: [Schopenhauer was not another Will so... is the name Arthur also used euphemistically?] Schopenhauer wrote The World as Will and Idea, 1818. See W.Wallace, no relation, Schopenhauer, 1890.
JM: Ah, that kind of Will...
CHW: Partridge wrote Shakespeare's Bawdy. A sudden thought: does that apostrophe s indicate a genitive or an elision?
JM: Is Eric Naiman present to comment on that?
CHW: Another thought: the delightful and affectionate account of the life, career and poetic offerings of Edsel Ford, The Ozarks Poet, here, as posted earlier... which I have just been reading more attentively, persuades me Ford was, indeed, very much in VN's mind at the time he was bodying forth Pale Fire... I must suppress all these burrs. Apologies to all those who feel annoyed.
JM: Should we believe you sound sufficiently contrite? Thank heavens, no ( Imho).
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