Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022852, Thu, 17 May 2012 23:40:48 -0300

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Re: searching the archives perversely
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Carolyn Kunin [ to JM: And, as Carolyn advised the VN-L, "A dip into the archives will reward the interested Nabokovian in associations of larks with madness in poems by Pushkin and Tiutchev"...] Try spelling it Tyutchev. I have noticed that the archives' search engine is more than a little perverse. Why are you so interested, I wonder. //[ to JM: "Please note that only the first limerick was creatred by Knox. At least, according to the entries in "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" (Oxford University Press, 1979) where God's answer is fittingly listed under "Anonymous."] What you call the "first limerick" doesn't make sense without the second, so I think they are both the work of MRK, who, being a monsignor, was very Catholic, and being very Catholic, was very anti-atheism, which of course is part of the force of the limerick ...

Jansy Mello: Sometimes the names of Russian authors I meet are "Brazilianized.." It varies according to the translator, critic or to an absentmindedness of my own. (And guess who is "Renato Cartesio" in some Catholic circles?)
CK, Thanks for a good tip: I'll search for nightingale and spell Tyutchev and hope for the best.
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Why am I interested in skylarks? Personally, one of my wishes has always been to see a skylark soaring and singing. In a "Nabokovian way" I'm interested in anything that might become a piece of one of VN' multiple puzzles which I know.to exist, although I haven't yet identified any particular pattern: there's a violet corner here, an orange cloud there or an alder decoy that fits nowhere. .By the way, Demon Veen seems to have been an expert fisherman in Ada.while, in Pale Fire, when explaining the iridule, Charles Kinbote will mention "an ardent fisherman." Yesterday, for the first time, I related the fish (perch) to Shade's distinct references to his (favorite) perches. Winged sirens?*

In relation to RK, I don't see why I should doubt the information presented by the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations that distinguishes two limericks where C.Kunin finds only one. .

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* The "chauntecleer" (or Chantecleer) association to Cantaboff is far-fetched, true. However, it landed me in the realm of the medieval fabliaux (a theme that frequently arises in VN and that, departing from carnivalesque obscene mockeries, would later inspire Lafontaine's moral tales...), in line with folkloric festivities and several curious monsters (such as the evil "Cockatrice" who is not a bird, not a siren, but a winged serpent with the head of a bird). But you certainly know more about that than I do!

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