Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011114, Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:02:38 -0800

Subject
Fw: Re: Fw: mulberry/ amora
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello" <jansy@aetern.us>
To: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 1:31 PM
Subject: Fw: Re: Fw: mulberry/ amora


> Dear List,
>
> A friend at the list sent me a warning note:
>
> "Remember how VN cautioned Mary McCarthy about adding too much angelica to
> Kinbote's embroidery; with all due respect, we have an entire
> confectionery
> shop on our hands. As we say here -- "just the berries!" A local way of
> saying 'Real cool.' "
>
> C. Kunin advised: " stop the berries!"
>
> VN, in Ada, spoke about "a pun of puns", a "logogriph", a fake, a monster
> in
> words ( by ignoring traditional syntactic and linguistic rules ).
>
> I wonder if the "mulberry thread" points to such a capricious and cruel
> mythological formation with words, to a "watermark" ?
>
> VN broke down words in ways that were radically
> different from James Joyce´s ( in The Wake ), and he also cultivated a
> very
> keen sense of humor.
>
> Jansy
>
>
> -----Mensagem Original-----
>> De: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
>> Para: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>> Enviada em: Quarta-feira, 23 de Fevereiro de 2005 21:16
>> Assunto: Re: Fw: mulberry/ amora
>>
>>
>> Dear Jansy and others on this silkworm thread,
>>
>> The Spanish for mulberry is "moral," which would certainly make it a good
>> Tree
>> of Knowledge (of the Knowledge of Good and Evil)!!! Interesting that
> "moral"
>> in
>> one language becomes "amora" in its neighbor, from the prim to the
>> illicitness
>> of an almost amoral amour.
>>
>> Brian Boyd
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of D. Barton Johnson
>> Sent: Thu 2/24/2005 6:17 AM
>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> Subject: Fw: mulberry/ amora
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <mailto:jansy@aetern.us>
>> To: don barton johnson <mailto:chtodel@cox.net>
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 8:39 AM
>> Subject: mulberry/ amora
>>
>> It never occurred to me to look up "mulberry" in an English/Portuguese
>> dictionary but I always knew that silk-worms need the "amoreira tree" to
>> develop. Like it is foreshadowed in the "first shattal tree" by Van´s
>> silk-threads covering his mouth after kissing Ada.
>> Mulberry in Portuguese is "amora" ( a lovely word, i.e, a word that is
>> "amoravel" - and it could share the palyndrome about being enamoured
>> with
>> Rome: "amor a Roma" ).
>>
>> I don´t have a dictionary to find the word in Spanish, though, with which
> VN
>> would certainly be more familiar where we could find a new extension into
>> the
>> "love" direction.
>>
>>
>> My husband mocked me today because while I discussed this idea of Boyd´s
>> that
>> Lucette should be considered as " a young martyr" ( because she comes
>> associated with krestiks, signets and the Christian crucifixion images )
> I
>> suggested that the "cross" might simply be a kind of "shifter" to
>> announce
> a
>> "cross-word puzzle" or an "acrostic" and not be an indicator of an actual
>> "suffering at the cross".
>> He concluded that I was creating a new breed of "crossberries" ...
>> Jansy
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>> HMM...there might be a whole net of motifs of which mulberry is a part.
>> Something like the elaborate daisy chain in Speak Memory with rainbows,
>> jewels,
>> colored glass, etc which is decoded in the Index. In my Mulberry browsing
> I
>> note
>> that in times past, the Chinese used silkworm feces as a medical
>> treatment
>> for
>> vomiting.
>>
>> ----- End forwarded message -----
>>
>>
>
>