Subject
Nabokov/love rhyme
From
Date
Body
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
I guess it's time to set the record straight -- since I myself may have
contributed to the confusion. Nabokov was responding to a poem by Jay
Neugeboren printed in the TriQuarterly Tributes to him --"In the Chinese
boxes/ The academic foxes/ Pursue one another/ V. Nabokov/ The maker of
illusions/ Sees the confusion/ And smiles./ He sees his love/ In the
mirrors transparent / Where nothing is apparent/ He resides, royally"
(360).
VN wrote: "In a very pretty little poem, Mr. Neugeboren seems to rhyme,
somewhat surprisingly, 'Nabokov' and 'love.'" So, no, it was definitely
not his idea to rhyme the two -- and he wasn't wild about it, judging by
his response. Then he adds: "I would suggest 'talk of' or 'balk of' as
more closely conforming to the stressed middle vowel of that awkward
name..." and proceeds with the "querulous gawk" poem. (SO, 301-2).
Galya Diment
>
> From: Earl Sampson <esampson@cu.campuscwix.net> (Retired teacher of Russian
> language and literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder)
>
> No one has responded to Jeff Alexander's question of last Wednesday on the
> pronunciation of the final consonant of VN's name. First of all, was it
> mentioned on the list where Nabokov proposed "love" as a rhyme for his name?
> If it was, I can't find it. I ask because I would like to know the context; it
> occurs that he might have meant it simply as a Nabokovian joke (suggesting the
> importance of love in the Nabokovian universe), more than as a guide to the
> pronunciation of his name. But to speak directly to the possibilities Jeff
> suggests (below): 1) No. Final consonants were devoiced in standard Russian,
> whether Moscow or Petersburg dialect, since long before Nabokov's youth. 2)
> Possibly. There are people on the list who have heard Nabokov speak; do they
> remember whether he tended to devoice final consonants in English? I have
> heard other Russian speakers with this trait in their Russian-accented English
> (as had VN himself; witness Pnin's "I haf nofing!")
>
> To return to the pronunciation of the stressed "o" in Nabokov: I agree with
> Tim Henderson that my (Colorado native) pronunciation of the vowel in "gawk"
> (or squawk) certainly does *not* coincide with the pronunciation of the
> stressed Russian "o". "Spoke of" to my ear seems closer, but not identical,
> because of the American tendency to dipthongization. Tim is right that our
> "aw" is an unrounded vowel (Say "Ah"), but the "o" is a rounded vowel (pucker
> up). Perhaps the secret is that the Russian "o" is *more* rounded than the
> English/American, and the greater rounding renders dipthongization impossible
> (I remember telling students to emphasize rounding to the point that it seemed
> to them exaggerated to more closely approximate the Russian rounded vowels "o"
> and "u"). I am certainly not a phonetician, so if I am wrong on this point
> perhaps someone with more expertise can correct me.
>
> Pronunciation aside, no one has commented on VN's unusual use of the word
> "gawk" (so unusual that people have (mis)remembered the verses with the more
> "logical" word "squawk"). I have always known the word as a verb (to stare
> gape-mouthed); my dictionaries tell me it is also a noun, but with the meaning
> "lout", not the name of a sound. My theory: VN knew very well the dictionary
> meanings of "gawk", but took the poetic license of using a word that seemed to
> him more onomatopoetically descriptive of the cry of a heron. Has anyone
> encountered "gawk" anywhere else as a name for a bird cry (or similar sound)?
> Another question occurs: is "geek" derived from "gawk"?
>
> Galya Diment wrote:
>
> > From: Jeff Alexander <jeff_alexander@franklin.com>
> >
> > I would like to thank Tim Henderson for clearing up the confusion
> > about "gawk of"; it seems to be a good rhyme for the last two syllables
> > of Nabokov's name in British, but not in American English. I was
> > beginning to doubt my admittedly very rusty Russian even more than
> > usual!
> >
> > I would like to pose a question about the pronunciation of the
> > *final* syllable of N's name that a list member can perhaps answer.
> > Anatoly Vorobey writes:
> >
> > > 'Nabokov' does
> > > not technically rhyme with 'love' because the stressed syllables are
> > > different; when Nabokov said it did, he meant the *last* syllable of
> > > 'Nabokov', which is reduced to schwa in pronunciation, as unstressed
> > > vowels in Russian generally are.
> >
> > What I find confusing in Nabokov's choice of "love" as a rhyme for
> > the last syllable of his name is not in the vowel, but the consonant.
> > When I studied Russian phonetics, it was drilled into me that final
> > voiced consonants are always pronounced as their devoiced equivalents
> > (i.e. final "v" is pronounced "f", "b" becomes "p", "g" becomes "k", etc.),
> > so that "kov" is pronounced "kuhff". Knowing how important precision
> > was to Nabokov, his choice therefore puzzles me. Two possibilities
> > suggest themselves: 1) that in the Russian spoken in pre-revolutionary
> > St. Petersburg a final "v" would not have been devoiced to "f", and this
> > is simply a feature of modern spoken Russian; or 2) that Nabokov's own
> > pronunciation of the "v" in "love" was idiosyncratic. Any ideas?
> >
> > Since I usually lurk on this list, let me introduce myself: I'm an
> > editor who lives in Philadelphia, USA, and am a big fan of Russian
> > literature generally and Nabokov in particular.
>
>
>
I guess it's time to set the record straight -- since I myself may have
contributed to the confusion. Nabokov was responding to a poem by Jay
Neugeboren printed in the TriQuarterly Tributes to him --"In the Chinese
boxes/ The academic foxes/ Pursue one another/ V. Nabokov/ The maker of
illusions/ Sees the confusion/ And smiles./ He sees his love/ In the
mirrors transparent / Where nothing is apparent/ He resides, royally"
(360).
VN wrote: "In a very pretty little poem, Mr. Neugeboren seems to rhyme,
somewhat surprisingly, 'Nabokov' and 'love.'" So, no, it was definitely
not his idea to rhyme the two -- and he wasn't wild about it, judging by
his response. Then he adds: "I would suggest 'talk of' or 'balk of' as
more closely conforming to the stressed middle vowel of that awkward
name..." and proceeds with the "querulous gawk" poem. (SO, 301-2).
Galya Diment
>
> From: Earl Sampson <esampson@cu.campuscwix.net> (Retired teacher of Russian
> language and literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder)
>
> No one has responded to Jeff Alexander's question of last Wednesday on the
> pronunciation of the final consonant of VN's name. First of all, was it
> mentioned on the list where Nabokov proposed "love" as a rhyme for his name?
> If it was, I can't find it. I ask because I would like to know the context; it
> occurs that he might have meant it simply as a Nabokovian joke (suggesting the
> importance of love in the Nabokovian universe), more than as a guide to the
> pronunciation of his name. But to speak directly to the possibilities Jeff
> suggests (below): 1) No. Final consonants were devoiced in standard Russian,
> whether Moscow or Petersburg dialect, since long before Nabokov's youth. 2)
> Possibly. There are people on the list who have heard Nabokov speak; do they
> remember whether he tended to devoice final consonants in English? I have
> heard other Russian speakers with this trait in their Russian-accented English
> (as had VN himself; witness Pnin's "I haf nofing!")
>
> To return to the pronunciation of the stressed "o" in Nabokov: I agree with
> Tim Henderson that my (Colorado native) pronunciation of the vowel in "gawk"
> (or squawk) certainly does *not* coincide with the pronunciation of the
> stressed Russian "o". "Spoke of" to my ear seems closer, but not identical,
> because of the American tendency to dipthongization. Tim is right that our
> "aw" is an unrounded vowel (Say "Ah"), but the "o" is a rounded vowel (pucker
> up). Perhaps the secret is that the Russian "o" is *more* rounded than the
> English/American, and the greater rounding renders dipthongization impossible
> (I remember telling students to emphasize rounding to the point that it seemed
> to them exaggerated to more closely approximate the Russian rounded vowels "o"
> and "u"). I am certainly not a phonetician, so if I am wrong on this point
> perhaps someone with more expertise can correct me.
>
> Pronunciation aside, no one has commented on VN's unusual use of the word
> "gawk" (so unusual that people have (mis)remembered the verses with the more
> "logical" word "squawk"). I have always known the word as a verb (to stare
> gape-mouthed); my dictionaries tell me it is also a noun, but with the meaning
> "lout", not the name of a sound. My theory: VN knew very well the dictionary
> meanings of "gawk", but took the poetic license of using a word that seemed to
> him more onomatopoetically descriptive of the cry of a heron. Has anyone
> encountered "gawk" anywhere else as a name for a bird cry (or similar sound)?
> Another question occurs: is "geek" derived from "gawk"?
>
> Galya Diment wrote:
>
> > From: Jeff Alexander <jeff_alexander@franklin.com>
> >
> > I would like to thank Tim Henderson for clearing up the confusion
> > about "gawk of"; it seems to be a good rhyme for the last two syllables
> > of Nabokov's name in British, but not in American English. I was
> > beginning to doubt my admittedly very rusty Russian even more than
> > usual!
> >
> > I would like to pose a question about the pronunciation of the
> > *final* syllable of N's name that a list member can perhaps answer.
> > Anatoly Vorobey writes:
> >
> > > 'Nabokov' does
> > > not technically rhyme with 'love' because the stressed syllables are
> > > different; when Nabokov said it did, he meant the *last* syllable of
> > > 'Nabokov', which is reduced to schwa in pronunciation, as unstressed
> > > vowels in Russian generally are.
> >
> > What I find confusing in Nabokov's choice of "love" as a rhyme for
> > the last syllable of his name is not in the vowel, but the consonant.
> > When I studied Russian phonetics, it was drilled into me that final
> > voiced consonants are always pronounced as their devoiced equivalents
> > (i.e. final "v" is pronounced "f", "b" becomes "p", "g" becomes "k", etc.),
> > so that "kov" is pronounced "kuhff". Knowing how important precision
> > was to Nabokov, his choice therefore puzzles me. Two possibilities
> > suggest themselves: 1) that in the Russian spoken in pre-revolutionary
> > St. Petersburg a final "v" would not have been devoiced to "f", and this
> > is simply a feature of modern spoken Russian; or 2) that Nabokov's own
> > pronunciation of the "v" in "love" was idiosyncratic. Any ideas?
> >
> > Since I usually lurk on this list, let me introduce myself: I'm an
> > editor who lives in Philadelphia, USA, and am a big fan of Russian
> > literature generally and Nabokov in particular.
>
>
>