Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024084, Sat, 27 Apr 2013 16:37:55 -0300

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Re: Zemblan and digitized Samuel Johson (Crapula)
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Jansy Mello: Have I misread PF's "crapula" as a word in Zemblan? Did Kinbote mention it to indicate the OED, Burguess or...?

Barrie Akin: I bow to A. Bouazza's compendious knowledge of Burgess.But returning to PF, I assume that Kinbote was using crapula as an English word, simply because it is so romance based, whereas Zemblan words elsewhere in PF are usually germanic/nordic/slavic based.
A. Bouazza: There is no suggestion that it is a Zemblan word (although, Zemblan would have words of Latin and Greek origin like any European language). It is a "learned" word, just like skoramis, psychopompos, parhelion etc. in the novel. Here is the context: "I still hoped there had been a mistake, and Shade would telephone. It was a bitter wait, and the only effect that the bottle of champagne I drank all alone now at this window, now at that, had on me was a bad crapula (hangover)."

Jansy Mello: What lead me to Zemblan was Kinbote's care to explain the word in a parenthesis and I failed to notice that Zemblan words are distinguished by means of italics (at least, in the examples that follow): "And at a picnic for international children a Zemblan moppet cried to her Japanese friend: Ufgut, ufgut, velkam ut Semblerland! (Adieu, adieu, till we meet in Zembla!)"; "I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty)". whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away")":
Since Kinbote didn't add an explanation to "skoramis, psychopompos" or "parhelia," my misreading may, perhaps, be forgiven.

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