Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011090, Tue, 22 Feb 2005 11:12:55 -0800

Subject
Fwd: mulberry and burnberry
Date
Body
EDNOTE. I too skimmed through my fairly extensive botanical library without
finding "burnberry." Odd, it certainly seems familiar. I wonder if there is a
similarly named Russian plant?
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:07:38 -0000
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>

Following Boyd´s fascinating text on the "Inseparable Fates" chapter of his "
Nabokov´s Ada" I came across once more a very complete and complex analysis
about the mulberry-soap reference.
Soon later I found " Lucete hides among the burnberry bushes" and has her shorts
"stained with burnberry purple".
I remember Boyd explaining that a brook is a "burn" ( page 141) .

I have not been able to locate any "burnberry" amidst the botanical references I
could acess. Are there indeed " burnberries" and "burnberry bushes" as real
plants?

If not, would those plants be an indirect way of introducing the "here we go
round the mulberry bush" theme?
If it happens to be so ( burnberry as another way of writing about mulberry ) we
would once again find those curious exchanges bt word sounds in Nabokov...

Could any botanist in the list help ?
Jansy

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