NABOKV-L discussion

Here’s some word play I have noticed in Pale Fire:

Life Everlasting – based on a misprint! (poem 803)

MISPRINT = SPIRIT + MN

“Life Everlasting” means “spirit” and is found in the word “misprint”. Misprints appear to be important clues in PF for connecting themes and plot solutions and “correlated pattern in the game”.

The wonderful literary critic Jonathan Bate, best known as a Shakespearean, is writing a book on six favorite authors, including Nabokov, and wants to link each of them to their love of Shakespeare, and especially by their own personal copy of Shakespeare. Nabokov had a cheap one-volume edition, and a Folger edition of Hamlet, but I also saw a three or four-volume edition whose size was, I think, sextodecimo (twice the size of Kinbote's 32mo Timon Afinsken) in vermilion soft leather in an exhibition at the Montreux Palace in 1999.

I grew up not too far from The Holderness School, in New Hampshire, where Dmitri attended in the late 40s and early 50s. One of my grade school classmates is now the editor of the school's alumni magazine and shared with me this photo and amusing caption, which first appeared in the school's 1951 yearbook, The Dial.

I am wondering if it has been noted anywhere that Gerald Emerald must be “bad Bob,” Kinbote’s erstwhile roomer? It seems so obvious to me now, but there is nothing in the listserve archives - perhaps somewhere else?

The convincing clue for me is in the index under Kinbote: “His participation in a Common Room discussion of his resemblance to the King, and his final rupture with E. (not in the Index)” (my emphasis)

Question for Russian speakers:

In Pale Fire's index, under "Botkin, V." there is "bot, plop, and boteliy, big-bellied (Russ.)"

I have tried several on-line translation sites and they do not show translations for bot or boteliy. Are these possibly slang terms? word-play? Is bot onomonpoetic of plopping?

I'm wondering if boteliy might be VN's way of inserting himself? I think he was not too happy about gaining weight. 

I would like to announce that I have uploaded a paper to academia.edu: “Kinbote’s Hero’s Journey: Transcendent Path or Dead End?”

https://www.academia.edu/38426808/KINBOTE_S_HERO_S_JOURNEY-MaryRoss.docx

I would like to announce that I have uploaded a paper to academia.edu: “Kinbote’s Hero’s Journey: Transcendent Path or Dead End?”

https://www.academia.edu/38426808/KINBOTE_S_HERO_S_JOURNEY-MaryRoss.docx

CFP: Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era (edited volume)

I have noticed a cluster of misprints in Pale Fire’s index. I don’t know if they are accidental or intentional, but since reading James Ramey’s astounding discoveries of purposeful punctuation anomalies in the index (Pale Fire’s Black Crown, Nabokov Online Journal, Vol. VI (2012) pp. 1-17) I have to wonder.

Under Shade, John Francis we find:

A recent article by Mary Ross in Nabokovian Notes features Pale Fire’s arcane landlord, Judge Goldsworth. The article suggests that the judge represents aspects of Saturn, both the planet and myth, adding that on the eve of John Shade’s 61st birthday “a bright ‘star’ would be rising in the east–Saturn returning to its celestial position of 61 years ago.” “As it happens” the author  says, “(the judge) has been away and is soon to return.”