Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019312, Tue, 2 Feb 2010 22:44:35 +0300

Subject
uncle Ruka, L-words
Date
Body
Dear Jansy,

I'm afraid I only succeeded in misleading you even more with my comments. What is strange, you seem to be aware of the passage absent from Speak, Memory but present in "Другие берега" (Chapter Three, 5;* it is in the paragraph following the one that ends: "He was extremely good at poker"): "в каком-то иностранном притоне, где молодого Г., неопытного и небогатого приятеля Василья Ивановича, обыграл шулер, - Василий Иванович, знавший толк в фокусах, сел с шулером играть и преспокойно передёрнул, чтобы выручить приятеля". I hope someone with better English than mine will translate this passage for you, if it doesn't exist in English (in Conclusive Evidence). The word шулер is implicitly present in Ada ("I have often wondered why the Russian for it... is the same as the German for 'schoolboy' minus the umlaut..." 1.28). As you know, German for 'schoolboy' is Schüler.

Another word that begins with an L and happens to be an anagram of "lair" and "liar" is lira (Russian for "lyre"). One also remembers the family name Larin, of the two girls and their mother, in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.

*in Speak, Memory: Three, 4

Alexey Sklyarenko

Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com

Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/







Attachment