Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010647, Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:02:32 -0800

Subject
Re: Fwd: Re: TT-21. MORTADELLA & HOPE
Date
Body
Hello, John

Quite an impressive hat you wore after Don´s promptings ( "Ain't you sorry
you asked me to put on my philologists funny hat?" ) but, for my part, I´m
not at all sorry for getting a glimpse of your lovely mitre. I had always
wondered about the pronunciation of tye "y" as "ü" ( such as Elysium in
German ) and now I know it also signals a borrowing from the Greek into
Latin!
What struck me in the anagram "repos/spero" was the abrupt change from the
French (repos) into the Latin ( spero ) with no etymologic linking ( I have
no authority to garantee that ) that we could use for an invariant or in its
transformational axis.This is why I preferred to consider it by using VN´s
expression: a "dream with words".
Thank you for a very enriching answer. Jansy



----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 12:56 AM
Subject: Fwd: Re: TT-21. MORTADELLA & HOPE


> > No time for a more careful observation ( here it is almost two in the
> > morning...)
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: D. Barton Johnson
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 12:23 AM
> > Subject: TT-21. MORTADELLA DI FEGATO (liver mortadella)Donald B.
> Johnson wrote:
> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
> > Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 01:56:54 -0300
> > From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
> >
> > Mortadella, according to my Portuguese dictionary, comes from the
Latin:
> > "murta", myrtle? ( "mit Myrthen und Rosen"... ) which were the leaves
added
> > for the preservation of meat ( either pork or beef ).
> > -----------------------------------------------------
> > EDcomment. I hadn't seen this when I earlier sent the "Mort-" = mortar
> > derivation. Your dictionary might be right. Let's ask John who is a
Romance
> > philologist by training.
>
> At one time I was an aerial machine gunner by trade and training!
> > -----------------------------------
> But, On this topic,
>
> We have a "baloney" lunch meat, which was, presumably by inspiration
> born as a relative of a type of "sausage"in Italy that is there
> called "mortadella" (sometimes with the added lable "di Bologna"
> i. e. from Bologna. That "lunch meat" is not quite like ours.
> Specifically it is larger by a least a quarter in diameter. Also
> a slice of it will have several squarish white parts, a little
> over a centimeter across, that look like fat. As you buy some
> slices of this, the proprieter of the salumeria will lean toward
> you and in a conspirator's voice tell you, "E fatto di carne di
> cavallo": then admit that this is a joke. But the rumor is
> general in Italy. The word "mortad-ello (I hyphenate to show the
> base stem and the suffix) is based on the Latin (participial)
> adjective "myrtatus" or "murtatus" meaning prepared with myrtle.
> The Latin form shows by its spelling with y that it was derived from
> a Greek term, and by its pronunciation with /u/ that it was an
> early borrowing (later Greek borrowings have /i/ for this
> vowel. The Latin form with /d/ shows it was a northern Italianb
> form, or rather not a southern one. I had never thought to comnect
> it, however, with Lombardy, since its traditionally associated
> witn Bologna, which is in Emilia.
>
> Ain't you sorry you asked me to put on my philologists funny hat?
>
> And Jansy went on to say,
>
> > John, I cannot understand "repos" as "hope".
>
> Actually what I was trying (ineptly it seema) was to show that one
> anagram (a word game that Nabokov waw fond of that consists of
> rearranging the letters of a word or name) places those letters
> in the form "spero", which is a latin word meaning "hope" as
> in the French result "espoir".
>
> How did you reach this link?
> > In Brazil we name " arquivo morto" ( "dead file" ?) what is filed away
after
> a
> > case is closed.
> > A "repos file" could either mean " not yet dead" or "resting" either as
in "
> I
> > rest my case" or as " here lie the ashes of"...
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > ED: Mortadella, according to my Portuguese dictionary, comes from the
> > Latin: "murta", myrtle? ( "mit Myrthen und Rosen"... ) which were
> > the leaves added for the preservation of meat ( either pork or beef ).
> >
> >
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>

----- End forwarded message -----