Subject: FW: [NABOKV-L] FW: Speaking of Ties and "Os" and Bows [originally sent 7/2/06]
From: "Dmitri Nabokov" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:44:34 -0400

PS: Incidentally, I do have a photo of a college-age VN with an elegant
papillon (bow tie).
-----Original Message-----
From: Dmitri Nabokov [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: mercredi, 19. juillet 2006 08:38
To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
Subject: RE: [NABOKV-L] FW: Speaking of Ties and "Os" and Bows
[originally sent 7/2/06]

Dear Jerry,
 
Thanks for yours, and no need for apologies. It was all in good fun, yet
your therapeutic intent was clear. As for Nab - ? - kov, I might mention
that I just had a visitor who, by chance, was not a reader of VN and,
was, in fact, totally bewildered by walls filled with the works of a
sole author, totally unknown to her to boot.. She is a product of US
education, an attorney by trade, and as American as April in Arizona
(even if she does happen to hail from Texas). Well, she spelled my first
name, on the first try, without benefit of a superfluous "i", a
privilege that only my homonym the hockey forward has heretoforer
enjoyed; and, mirabile dictu, pronounced our family name not with the
compromise we've all done spoke of, but with an impeccable Slavic "o".
So the Amurrican morphology is capable of it!  Instead of dispatching
dozens of Nabokovians on a wild chase whose fruit was not a goose but
only a goose egg, why does Merriam Webster overtax the capabilies of
that nice ponytailed graduate student and her amorphous schwa, rather
than inviting a real Russian -- like me -- to the recording studio to
"hear Nabokov pronounced"?
 
Sincerely,
 
Dmitri Nabokov 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of Jerry Katsell
Sent: mardi, 18. juillet 2006 18:05
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [NABOKV-L] FW: Speaking of Ties and "Os" and Bows [originally
sent 7/2/06]

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Katsell [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 8:50 PM
To: [email-masked]'
Subject: Speaking of Ties and "Os" and Bows

                        

            Dear List, Dmitri and Bill Delaney,

Sorry if I've been misleading or unclear. Nabokov, of course, was not
known as a wearer of bow ties. I've never ever seen a picture of him
wearing one, at Cornell or elsewhere. I made up the sentence: "Nabokov,
wearing his signature butterfly blue bow tie, spoke off the cuff about
the difficulties of pronouncing his family name." My purpose was to
illustrate the near twinning of the last two syllables of the surname,
Nabokov, and "spoke off". Also, I tried to hide, apparently all too well
because I was obscure, the name Nabokov in ".his signature butterfly
blue bow tie, spoke off." [signature. bow. spoke off] I thought I was
giving a hint with "signature," in the word's other meaning of one's
signed name. As to "blue bow tie," I was thinking of the enlightening
book Nabokov's Blues by Kurt Johnson and Steve Coates, as well as the
strikingly beautiful picture of a male Karner Blue butterfly (aka
Lycaeides samuelis Nabokov) in the book Nabokov at Cornell. 

Once again, I apologize for any confusion. My intent was to come up with
near equivalents in English that would aid an English speaker with no
Russian to pronounce "Nabokov" as closely as possible to the way the
surname should be pronounced.

Best wishes to all,

Jerry Katsell

 

 

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