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[ NABOKOV-L] Ego latino macairos? Kinbote certainly does.
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Nab-L archives: "Not content merely to note the allusion to Browning’s “Pippa Passes,” Boyd finds in Mrs. Sutherland Orr’s Handbook of 1892 an account of the origin of that poem in a walk taken by Browning Ain a wood near Dulwich.” ...Boyd omits to alert us here to the Index, where “marrowsky” is explained ...(Spoonerism is itself derived from the phonemic transpositions of the Warden of New College Oxford named Spooner)." (Charles Lock, University of Copenhagen; Nabokov's Centenary: A V-shaped Hereafter)
JM: A spoonerism, according to Kinbote, is present in the variants to the name Komarovski ("marrowsky, makarovski, macaronski...") *
There was a real Marrowky (Cf. wikipedia: A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis). It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency. It is also known as a marrowsky, after a Polish count who suffered from the same impediment. While spoonerisms are commonly heard as slips of the tongue resulting from unintentionally getting one's words in a tangle, they can also be used intentionally as a play on words. In some cultures, spoonerisms are used as a rhyme form used in poetry, such as German Schüttelreime. Spoonerisms are commonly used intentionally in humour, especially drunk humour).
Besides, there is another significant spoonerism that appears in Kinbote's invented "macaronski" which, in turn takes us to his note to line 741:"a letter from the King did turn up giving his address...A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumrudov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client’s alias...No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious."
The slip of paper Gradus must swallow, the one that carries Kinbote's name, address and place of work, is on paper used by "macaroon makers."
Why did Nabokov mention "macaroon" and "macaronski" - if not to give a hint about another type of "spoonerism" that he employed in Pale Fire?, ie, the "macaronic language"**?
We are familiar with the "macaronic" transposition from Botkin into Kinbote, but are there other pointed clues mentioned in the slip of paper, such as derived from Goldsmith, New Wye, aso, which were hidden in the Zemblan macaronic addresses Gradus memorized and gorged down?
btw: An example of modern "macaronic language" is found in the names of characters in the Astérix series. Two of the most famous ones were baptized with designations for symbols used in foot-notes: Asterix (*) and Obelix (†).
Nabokov's wordgames in Ada are often "macaronic" and the paragraph where she mentions the "inspired logogriphs" teems with them***.
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
* - Pale Fire, note to line 347: "... John Shade...who displayed such fastidious care in his choice of fellow ramblers liked to trudge with the gaunt solemn German [Paul Hentzner] esteemed for knowing "the names of things" — though some of those names were no doubt local monstrosities, or Germanisms, or pure inventions ...my friend sparkled with quips, and marrowskies, and anecdotes which I gallantly countered with tales of Zembla...As we were skirting Dulwich Forest...(the spot where the good farmer invariably stopped...his little boy...pointed and remarked informatively: "Here Papa pisses.")..." and, in the index: "Marrowsky, a, a rudimentary spoonerism, from the name of a Russian diplomat of the early 19th century, Count Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouncing his own name — Makarovski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc."
**Here are some items found in the wikipedia, related to "macaronic language":
Macaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages, sometimes including bilingual puns, particularly when the languages are used in the same context (as opposed to different segments of a text being in different languages). The term is also sometimes used to denote hybrid words, which are in effect internally macaronic. A rough equivalent in spoken language is code-switching, a term in linguistics referring to using more than one language or dialect in conversation.Macaronic Latin specifically is a jumbled jargon made up of vernacular words given Latin endings, or for Latin words mixed with the vernacular in a pastiche (compare dog Latin).The word macaronic comes from the New Latin macaronicus, from Italian dialect maccarone ("dumpling, macaroni", regarded as coarse peasant fare). The term macaronic has derogatory overtones, and it is usually reserved for works where the mixing of languages has a humorous or satirical intent. It is a matter of debate whether the term can be applied to mixed-language literature of a more serious nature and purpose...Texts that mixed Latin and vernacular language apparently arose throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics or university students, but was losing ground to vernacular among poets, minstrels and storytellers. The Carmina Burana (collected ca. 1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German or French. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous carol In Dulci Jubilo, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of Greek. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many used the language mix for lyrical effect. Another early example in the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays (ca. 1460). In play 24 (The Talents), Pontius Pilate delivers a speech in mixed English-Latin rhyme.A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines...
Latin-Italian macaronic [the term "macaronic" is believed to originate from Padua in the late 14th century, apparently from maccarona, a kind of pasta or dumpling eaten by peasants at that time. (That word is also the presumed origin of the Italian word maccheroni.)] Its association with the genre comes from the Macaronea, a comical poem by Tifi Odasi in mixed Latin and Italian, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is Tosontea by Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's Macaronea.Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to satirize the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by common folk without resorting to their "vulgar" language. An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna (1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin, Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but is rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book. Tifi's Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of humorous texts in Macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian. An important example was Baldo by Teofilo Folengo, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter"
Other mixed-language lyrics: Macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism or language contact, such as Ireland before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs, such as Siúil A Rúin are quite common in Ireland. Macaronic songs became popular for a period among Highland immigrants to Glasgow, using English and Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. The term "macaronic" itself was popular as it bears a superficial resemblance to a common Gaelic surname form: Mac a ... meaning son of the ..."...Macaronic verse was also common in medieval India, where the influence of the Muslim rulers led to poems being written alternatingly in indigenous medieval Hindi verse, followed by one in the Persian language. This style was used by the famous poet Amir Khusro, and it also played a major role in the rise of the Urdu or Hindustani language.
Unintentional macaronic language - Homophonic translation:Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic. A Greek-French example, well-known among French schoolchildren, is attributed to Xénophon by Alfred de Vigny in Pluton ciel que Janus Proserpine "Ouk élabon polin, alla gar elpis éphè kaka." This means "They did not take the city, as they hadn't a hope [of taking it]." but if read in French sounds like:"Où qu'est la bonne Pauline? A la gare. Elle pisse et fait caca," meaning "Where is the maid Pauline? At the station. She's pissing and pooping." [Ouk elabon polin, FinnegansWiki]
Modern macaronic literature: Macaronic text is still used by modern Italian authors, e.g. by Carlo Emilio Gadda. Other examples are provided by the character Salvatore in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and the peasant hero of his Baudolino. Dario Fo' s Mistero Buffo ("Comic Mystery Play") features grammelot sketches using language with macaronic elements.
The novel The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt includes portions of Japanese, Classical Greek and Inuktitut, although the reader is not expected to understand the passages that are not in English.
Macaronic language is one of many language games used by the literary group Oulipo, in the form of interlinguistic homophonic transformation: replacing a known phrase by a homophonic equivalent in another language, the archetypal example of which is by François Le Lionnais, transforming John Keats's "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" into "Un singe de beauté est un jouet pour l'hiver" (A monkey of beauty is a toy for winter).Macaronisms figure prominently in the The Trilogy by the Polish novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Poetry: Two well-known examples of modern non-humorous macaronic verse are Byron's Maid of Athens, ere we part (1810, in English with a Greek refrain);and Pearsall's translation of the In Dulci Jubilo carol (1837, in mixed English-Latin verse).An example of modern humorous macaronic verse is the anonymous English-Latin poem Carmen Possum ("The Opossum's Song"), which is sometimes used as a teaching and motivational aid in elementary Latin language classes. Other similar examples are The Motor Bus by A. D. Godley, and the anonymous Up I arose in verno tempore.Recent examples are the mużajki or mosaics (2007) of Maltese poet Antoine Cassar (that mix English, Spanish, Maltese, Italian and French), the linguistic blendings of the Italian writer Guido Monte,[10] or the late poetry of Ivan Blatný that combines Czech with English.
Film: Macaronisms are frequently used in films, especially comedies. In Charlie Chaplin's anti-Nazi comedy The Great Dictator, the title character, who is a parody of Adolf Hitler, speaks a macaronic parody of the German language in his speeches. He uses German words like "Juden (Jew)" and "Sauerkraut" and English words that use macaronic German grammar, such as "Cheese-und-cracken". Other movies featuring use of Macaronic language are the Italian historical comedies L'armata Brancaleone and Brancaleone alle crociate, by Mario Monicelli, in which the characters speak a mix of modern and medieval Italian, as well as Latin (sometimes in rhyme, and sometimes with regional connotations, such as the Italo-Normans using words from modern Sicilian dialect).
(wiki doesn't mention Latin macaronic as it was employed by Molière in Le Malade Imaginaire, and in several works written by Portuguese and Brazilian poets and writers.)
*** - ADA: "Pedantic Ada once said that the looking up of words in a lexicon for any other needs than those of expression - be it instruction or art - lay somewhere between the ornamental assortment of flowers...and making collage-pictures of disparate butterfly wings... Per contra, she suggested to Van that verbal circuses, 'performing words,' 'poodle-doodles,' and so forth, might be redeemable by the quality of the brain work required for the creation of a great logogriph or inspired pun and should not preclude the help of a dictionary, gruff or complacent. That was why she admitted 'Flavita.' The name came from alfavit...It was fashionable throughout Estoty and Canady around 1790, was revived by the 'Madhatters' (as the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were once called) ... and now a century later seems to be again in vogue, so I am told, under the name of 'Scrabble'..."
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JM: A spoonerism, according to Kinbote, is present in the variants to the name Komarovski ("marrowsky, makarovski, macaronski...") *
There was a real Marrowky (Cf. wikipedia: A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis). It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency. It is also known as a marrowsky, after a Polish count who suffered from the same impediment. While spoonerisms are commonly heard as slips of the tongue resulting from unintentionally getting one's words in a tangle, they can also be used intentionally as a play on words. In some cultures, spoonerisms are used as a rhyme form used in poetry, such as German Schüttelreime. Spoonerisms are commonly used intentionally in humour, especially drunk humour).
Besides, there is another significant spoonerism that appears in Kinbote's invented "macaronski" which, in turn takes us to his note to line 741:"a letter from the King did turn up giving his address...A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumrudov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client’s alias...No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious."
The slip of paper Gradus must swallow, the one that carries Kinbote's name, address and place of work, is on paper used by "macaroon makers."
Why did Nabokov mention "macaroon" and "macaronski" - if not to give a hint about another type of "spoonerism" that he employed in Pale Fire?, ie, the "macaronic language"**?
We are familiar with the "macaronic" transposition from Botkin into Kinbote, but are there other pointed clues mentioned in the slip of paper, such as derived from Goldsmith, New Wye, aso, which were hidden in the Zemblan macaronic addresses Gradus memorized and gorged down?
btw: An example of modern "macaronic language" is found in the names of characters in the Astérix series. Two of the most famous ones were baptized with designations for symbols used in foot-notes: Asterix (*) and Obelix (†).
Nabokov's wordgames in Ada are often "macaronic" and the paragraph where she mentions the "inspired logogriphs" teems with them***.
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
* - Pale Fire, note to line 347: "... John Shade...who displayed such fastidious care in his choice of fellow ramblers liked to trudge with the gaunt solemn German [Paul Hentzner] esteemed for knowing "the names of things" — though some of those names were no doubt local monstrosities, or Germanisms, or pure inventions ...my friend sparkled with quips, and marrowskies, and anecdotes which I gallantly countered with tales of Zembla...As we were skirting Dulwich Forest...(the spot where the good farmer invariably stopped...his little boy...pointed and remarked informatively: "Here Papa pisses.")..." and, in the index: "Marrowsky, a, a rudimentary spoonerism, from the name of a Russian diplomat of the early 19th century, Count Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouncing his own name — Makarovski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc."
**Here are some items found in the wikipedia, related to "macaronic language":
Macaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages, sometimes including bilingual puns, particularly when the languages are used in the same context (as opposed to different segments of a text being in different languages). The term is also sometimes used to denote hybrid words, which are in effect internally macaronic. A rough equivalent in spoken language is code-switching, a term in linguistics referring to using more than one language or dialect in conversation.Macaronic Latin specifically is a jumbled jargon made up of vernacular words given Latin endings, or for Latin words mixed with the vernacular in a pastiche (compare dog Latin).The word macaronic comes from the New Latin macaronicus, from Italian dialect maccarone ("dumpling, macaroni", regarded as coarse peasant fare). The term macaronic has derogatory overtones, and it is usually reserved for works where the mixing of languages has a humorous or satirical intent. It is a matter of debate whether the term can be applied to mixed-language literature of a more serious nature and purpose...Texts that mixed Latin and vernacular language apparently arose throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics or university students, but was losing ground to vernacular among poets, minstrels and storytellers. The Carmina Burana (collected ca. 1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German or French. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous carol In Dulci Jubilo, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of Greek. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many used the language mix for lyrical effect. Another early example in the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays (ca. 1460). In play 24 (The Talents), Pontius Pilate delivers a speech in mixed English-Latin rhyme.A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines...
Latin-Italian macaronic [the term "macaronic" is believed to originate from Padua in the late 14th century, apparently from maccarona, a kind of pasta or dumpling eaten by peasants at that time. (That word is also the presumed origin of the Italian word maccheroni.)] Its association with the genre comes from the Macaronea, a comical poem by Tifi Odasi in mixed Latin and Italian, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is Tosontea by Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's Macaronea.Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to satirize the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by common folk without resorting to their "vulgar" language. An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna (1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin, Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but is rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book. Tifi's Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of humorous texts in Macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian. An important example was Baldo by Teofilo Folengo, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter"
Other mixed-language lyrics: Macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism or language contact, such as Ireland before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs, such as Siúil A Rúin are quite common in Ireland. Macaronic songs became popular for a period among Highland immigrants to Glasgow, using English and Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. The term "macaronic" itself was popular as it bears a superficial resemblance to a common Gaelic surname form: Mac a ... meaning son of the ..."...Macaronic verse was also common in medieval India, where the influence of the Muslim rulers led to poems being written alternatingly in indigenous medieval Hindi verse, followed by one in the Persian language. This style was used by the famous poet Amir Khusro, and it also played a major role in the rise of the Urdu or Hindustani language.
Unintentional macaronic language - Homophonic translation:Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic. A Greek-French example, well-known among French schoolchildren, is attributed to Xénophon by Alfred de Vigny in Pluton ciel que Janus Proserpine "Ouk élabon polin, alla gar elpis éphè kaka." This means "They did not take the city, as they hadn't a hope [of taking it]." but if read in French sounds like:"Où qu'est la bonne Pauline? A la gare. Elle pisse et fait caca," meaning "Where is the maid Pauline? At the station. She's pissing and pooping." [Ouk elabon polin, FinnegansWiki]
Modern macaronic literature: Macaronic text is still used by modern Italian authors, e.g. by Carlo Emilio Gadda. Other examples are provided by the character Salvatore in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and the peasant hero of his Baudolino. Dario Fo' s Mistero Buffo ("Comic Mystery Play") features grammelot sketches using language with macaronic elements.
The novel The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt includes portions of Japanese, Classical Greek and Inuktitut, although the reader is not expected to understand the passages that are not in English.
Macaronic language is one of many language games used by the literary group Oulipo, in the form of interlinguistic homophonic transformation: replacing a known phrase by a homophonic equivalent in another language, the archetypal example of which is by François Le Lionnais, transforming John Keats's "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" into "Un singe de beauté est un jouet pour l'hiver" (A monkey of beauty is a toy for winter).Macaronisms figure prominently in the The Trilogy by the Polish novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Poetry: Two well-known examples of modern non-humorous macaronic verse are Byron's Maid of Athens, ere we part (1810, in English with a Greek refrain);and Pearsall's translation of the In Dulci Jubilo carol (1837, in mixed English-Latin verse).An example of modern humorous macaronic verse is the anonymous English-Latin poem Carmen Possum ("The Opossum's Song"), which is sometimes used as a teaching and motivational aid in elementary Latin language classes. Other similar examples are The Motor Bus by A. D. Godley, and the anonymous Up I arose in verno tempore.Recent examples are the mużajki or mosaics (2007) of Maltese poet Antoine Cassar (that mix English, Spanish, Maltese, Italian and French), the linguistic blendings of the Italian writer Guido Monte,[10] or the late poetry of Ivan Blatný that combines Czech with English.
Film: Macaronisms are frequently used in films, especially comedies. In Charlie Chaplin's anti-Nazi comedy The Great Dictator, the title character, who is a parody of Adolf Hitler, speaks a macaronic parody of the German language in his speeches. He uses German words like "Juden (Jew)" and "Sauerkraut" and English words that use macaronic German grammar, such as "Cheese-und-cracken". Other movies featuring use of Macaronic language are the Italian historical comedies L'armata Brancaleone and Brancaleone alle crociate, by Mario Monicelli, in which the characters speak a mix of modern and medieval Italian, as well as Latin (sometimes in rhyme, and sometimes with regional connotations, such as the Italo-Normans using words from modern Sicilian dialect).
(wiki doesn't mention Latin macaronic as it was employed by Molière in Le Malade Imaginaire, and in several works written by Portuguese and Brazilian poets and writers.)
*** - ADA: "Pedantic Ada once said that the looking up of words in a lexicon for any other needs than those of expression - be it instruction or art - lay somewhere between the ornamental assortment of flowers...and making collage-pictures of disparate butterfly wings... Per contra, she suggested to Van that verbal circuses, 'performing words,' 'poodle-doodles,' and so forth, might be redeemable by the quality of the brain work required for the creation of a great logogriph or inspired pun and should not preclude the help of a dictionary, gruff or complacent. That was why she admitted 'Flavita.' The name came from alfavit...It was fashionable throughout Estoty and Canady around 1790, was revived by the 'Madhatters' (as the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were once called) ... and now a century later seems to be again in vogue, so I am told, under the name of 'Scrabble'..."
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Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
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