Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021780, Mon, 4 Jul 2011 01:25:04 +0100

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Re: [NABOKOV-L] {Sighting?] O'Connell - O' Donell
Date
Body
JansyM wrote: ... mysteriously, he is named Daniel O'Connell. One more trip
to his book-case and he gets Joyce's "The Dead" in which there is no
reference to Daniel O'Connell, nor any O'Donnell.

I¹m deeply puzzled. No conceivable mystery about one of Ireland¹s most
renowned rebel politicians! Dónal Ó Conaill (6 August 1775 ­ 15 May 1847;
English spelling: Daniel O'Connell. His name and praise for his struggles
for Catholic (and more generally Human) rights are ever-present in Irish
songs and literature. His face adorns postage stamps and bank notes. It¹s
impossible to do the Bloomsday tour without walking up Dublin¹s main street,
named after this hero. The O¹Connell Street Post Office was the immortal
scene of the Easter 1914 Rising. One end of this street is dominated by the
huge O¹Connell monument (erected 1864).

His fame as the Great Emancipator was world-wide, influencing Gandhi and
Martin Luther-King Jr.
There¹s also an interesting Hispanic connection: ³O'Connell admired Latin
American liberator Simón Bolívar, and one of his sons, Morgan O'Connell, was
a volunteer officer in Bolívar's army in 1820, aged 15.²
Endless literary links:
He was told by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811­1863) "you have done more
for your nation than any man since Washington ever did." William Gladstone
(1809­1898) described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever
seen." Honoré de Balzac (1799­1850) wrote that "Napoleon and O'Connell were
the only great men the 19th century had ever seen." Jean-Henri Merle
d'Aubigné (1794­1872) wrote that "the only man like Luther, in the power he
wielded was O'Connell." William Grenville (1759­1834) wrote that "history
will speak of him as one of the most remarkable men that ever lived."
O'Connell met, befriended, and became a great inspiration to Frederick
Douglass (1818­1895) a former American slave who became a highly influential
leader of the abolitionist movement, social reformer, orator, writer and
statesman.
(wiki)

I have no idea why Daniel O¹Connell¹s name should or should not be expected
in Joyce¹s The Dead.

Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 01/07/2011 00:59, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

> "O¹Donnell, Sylvia, nee O¹Connell, born 1895? 1890?, the much-traveled,
> much-married mother of Odon (q.v.), 149, 691; after marrying and divorcing
> college president Leopold O¹Donnell in 1915, father of Odon, she married Peter
> Gusev, first Duke of Rahl, and graced Zembla till about 1925 when she married
> an Oriental prince met in Chamonix; after a number of other more or less
> glamorous marriages, she was in the act of divorcing Lionel Lavender, cousin
> of Joseph, when last seen in this Index."
> (Pale Fire)
>
> Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas, in Dublinesca (2010), describes the mental
> and physical rambles of an ex-editor who is fond of quotations and sees his
> life as a written text, called Samuel Riba.The editor-narrator has decided to
> visit Dublin during bloomsday but he realizes that he's forgotten the name of
> a bridge where a white horse is seen by every person who crosses it. He checks
> it in his translation of Joyce's Dubliners by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and
> finds out that, by a misprint, the bridge is at first called O'Connell but
> next it becomes O' Donnell. He now checks it in María Isabel Butler de
> Foley's translation which only mentions O' Connell but where, mysteriously, he
> is named Daniel O'Connell. One more trip to his book-case and he gets Joyce's
> "The Dead" in which there is no reference to Daniel O'Connell, nor any
> O'Donnell.
>
> This particular item may have caught E.Vila-Matas's attention because he'd
> read Nabokov's "Pale Fire" and still remembered a certain Sylvia née O'
> Connell, later married to Leopold O' Donnell. By unfolding his search by
> focusing on this particular item he'd be making a subtle reference to Nabokov,
> along with James Joyce. However, only the author himself can confirm such a
> conjecture. It's almost impossible that Nabokov would have inserted a
> reference to Joyce's Dubliners at this point. Unless there's a particular
> meaning, related to PF, that can be found in ... a white horse?
>


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