Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002506, Sat, 25 Oct 1997 11:41:00 -0700

Subject
Sebastian Knight; a Kinbote question (fwd)
Date
Body
Hello,

A few stray questions from recent NABOKV-L messages...

Kamni Gill quoted a passage from Speak, Memory:
> when a drop of water is observed falling from the a leaf:
> "Tip, leaf, dip relief"

Doesn't Sebastian Knight's mother leave his father in this manner?
The raindrop slides down the syringa leaf, and when its bright burden is
shed the leaf rebounds with a shudder... I forget the passage. Does
anyone else have it handy?

Plus, a pronunciation question about "Kinbote." The first time I
read Pale Fire, as a naive but eager youngster, my mind's ear read it as
"kin bow tay," which I realize sounds more African than Zemblan. Is it
"kin boat," "kin bot," "keen bow tuh" (rhymes with Goethe?), or
something else? It is said to be a near anagram of Botkin or Botkine.
Is that a clue to how VN intended it to be pronounced?
Tangentially, VN said he was disappointed when people pronounced Ada
with a long A, losing the connection with "ardor."
Julian Barnes wrote in Flaubert's Parrot that "Vladimir Nabokov was
wrong--rather surprising, this--about the phonetics of the name
Lolita." We are under no obligation to trust Barnes, of course, but it
would be surprising indeed if it were true.

Patrick Nolan