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Re: malina
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It¹s strange to hear from CK that the Cabot/Lodge (aliter Lowell) aphorism
is an admittedly obscure bit of doggerel.¹ Most Brits I know who boast
minimal literary pretences are familiar with the joke in some form. One
assumes that that also applies (in spades!) to reasonably widely-read
Americans? I¹ve heard both Lodge and Lowell in the hierarchy, and no doubt
other families and locations will appear as the wealthy dynasties shift with
time. Needless to say, VN¹s amusing variant rings an instant bell to moi
(and DBJ, although he missed the anagrams). Assigning degrees of arcanity is
clearly a subjective matter, supported by anecdotal rather than statistical
evidence.
In Jonathan Dimbleby¹s Russia, A Tour (BBC DVD and book, 2008), he meets an
itinerant Russian labourer on an overnight train journey, en route to
Yasnaya Polyana. Dimbleby holds up the copy of Anna Karenina he happens to
be reading. Repeating the title and author¹s name in reasonable Russian
fails to invoke any recognition. Anna the Obscure, nay, Tolstoy the Unknown?
Pointless anecdote? Only if misused! Later, Dimbleby visits the Tolstovian
shrines, their tourist-worshippers and meets the great man¹s resident
descendant (g-g-..g-son?)
Dictionaries rarely reflect the native speaker¹s intuition for linguistic
register (the common example being Bye, bye, Your Holiness!¹) and for which
words are unnecessarily obscure¹ given the existence of everyday synonyms.
It¹s a moot point whether Nabokov deliberately used the rarer bits of
Webster II as a full- or semi-tease (Laura¹s omoplates!), or whether he
lacked that deeply in-wired¹ native awareness. Some of each, no doubt. The
last place for dogma is in matters sociolinguistical! VN gets an
interesting, relevant mention in Steven Pinker¹s The Language Instinct. The
gist is that VN¹s accent and command of spoken English (his preference for
pre-submitted questions and written prompts when interviewed) was inevitably
influenced by the age at which he acquired serious English fluency.
Hilariously, Conrad was even worse off. Few, claims Pinker, could understand
a word of his thick Slavonic English.
Incidentally, Alexey, did Stalin¹s Georgian accent arouse any sniggers?
Behind his back, of course? I¹ve heard that Mao Zedong¹s native Xiang
dialect was unintelligble to many Chinese. This explains, they say, the
absence of a strong Lincoln/Churchill-type tradition of speech-making in
Chinese politics, replaced by written speeches readable by all.
The Anglophone tolerance to intellectual foreign accents is well known. I
find VN¹s spoken English as enchanting as Einstein¹s! My mathematics
lecturer, Russian-born Abram Besicovitch, proudly told us that More peoples
speak English like what I do than like what you do, isn¹t it?¹
I had the pleasure of discussing this and other Nabokovian delicacies, in
the flesh, last Tuesday when Prof Victor Fet dropped in to see me in London
while en route to Moscow. Having enjoyed a similarly divine visitation from
Jansy Melon last month (illness, alas, prevented Carolyn Kunnin from
joining us), I want to thank the VN-Forum for these delightful and
unexpected membership side-benefits.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 29/07/2010 16:28, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Alexey Sklyarenko: Boyd...: "Stalin, a Georgian, admired Georgian folklore and
> here seems to be imagining the sweet raspberry taste of each execution and
> puffing out his chest as if it proves himself once again a Georgian hero."
> Although Stalin's nickname was Koba (after the hero of Kazbeghi's novel "The
> Patricide"), Dzhugashvili (whose assumed name comes from stal', "steel")
> desired to be not a Georgian, but Russian hero. Btw., Koba + t = Tobak. True,
> malina is Russian for "raspberry". But it can also mean "[to be] in clover"...
> Now, in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Canto Three, XXXIX, 7-14), in the scene
> travestied in Ada (1.2), girl servants picking berries are singing in chorus,
> so as their sly mouths wouldn't not eat in secret the seignioral berry. They
> also mention raspberries in their song...
>
> JM: Ah, Stalin's nickname was Koba! Things begin to make sense to me (the
> importance of Cabot/Tobak instead of Lowell).
>
> Carolyn Kunin commented on this matter in 2003 (but Lowell was left out, since
> the doggerel she remembered was applied to the Lodges).
> Here is Carolyn Kunin's old posting ( Wed, 2 Jul 2003 10:29:17 -0700), related
> to the Cabot doggerel.. Its subject is: "Carolyn Kunin notes on Alexey
> Sklyarenko's tobakami/sobakami essaylet in THE NABOKOVIAN #50 ," with
> D.B.Johnson 's EDNOTE.
> "I had never noticed that the "TOBAK(s)" and "dogs" were palindromes of the
> original CABOTs and GOD in the famous bit of doggerel that VN uses as the
> basis for his lines. As well, the TOBAK(s) echo the Russian word for dog
> SOBAKa. My thanks to Carolyn."
>
> CK's original note (Wednesday, June 11, 2003 12:36 PM) : "Among the tasty
> tid-bits in the latest Nabokovian are three notes from Alexey Sklyarenko, who
> continues to find more allusions to Russian literature in Ada. He intriguingly
> argues that some passages of dialogue in Ada show traces of translation from
> original Russian, particularly in the conversation between Van and Greg
> Erminin (Part III, chapter 3). However he has missed an allusion to an
> admittedly obscure bit of doggerel. In Ada "The Veens speak only to Tobaks/
> And Tobaks speak only to dogs." Although it may rhyme better in Russian
> (Tobakami/sobakami) the original is actually: Here's to good old Boston, the
> land of the Bean and the Cod, / Where Cabots speak only to Lodges, and the
> Lodges speak only to God. Also note the characteristically Nabokovian
> reversals of Cabot/Tobak and God/dog.
>
> But now I'm stuck with the Kabot(chnicks), Nikto, Nicot-Tobak(off), Botkin...
> Perhaps we can safely strike out Lowell now? And I can safely return to my
> borrowed book's "Homage to Eros" (a strange title, if one examines its staid
> contents).
>
> btw: C.Kunin also observed on Eberthella in the past, and linked it to Thomas
> Hardy's novel, " The Hand of Ethelberta"
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is an admittedly obscure bit of doggerel.¹ Most Brits I know who boast
minimal literary pretences are familiar with the joke in some form. One
assumes that that also applies (in spades!) to reasonably widely-read
Americans? I¹ve heard both Lodge and Lowell in the hierarchy, and no doubt
other families and locations will appear as the wealthy dynasties shift with
time. Needless to say, VN¹s amusing variant rings an instant bell to moi
(and DBJ, although he missed the anagrams). Assigning degrees of arcanity is
clearly a subjective matter, supported by anecdotal rather than statistical
evidence.
In Jonathan Dimbleby¹s Russia, A Tour (BBC DVD and book, 2008), he meets an
itinerant Russian labourer on an overnight train journey, en route to
Yasnaya Polyana. Dimbleby holds up the copy of Anna Karenina he happens to
be reading. Repeating the title and author¹s name in reasonable Russian
fails to invoke any recognition. Anna the Obscure, nay, Tolstoy the Unknown?
Pointless anecdote? Only if misused! Later, Dimbleby visits the Tolstovian
shrines, their tourist-worshippers and meets the great man¹s resident
descendant (g-g-..g-son?)
Dictionaries rarely reflect the native speaker¹s intuition for linguistic
register (the common example being Bye, bye, Your Holiness!¹) and for which
words are unnecessarily obscure¹ given the existence of everyday synonyms.
It¹s a moot point whether Nabokov deliberately used the rarer bits of
Webster II as a full- or semi-tease (Laura¹s omoplates!), or whether he
lacked that deeply in-wired¹ native awareness. Some of each, no doubt. The
last place for dogma is in matters sociolinguistical! VN gets an
interesting, relevant mention in Steven Pinker¹s The Language Instinct. The
gist is that VN¹s accent and command of spoken English (his preference for
pre-submitted questions and written prompts when interviewed) was inevitably
influenced by the age at which he acquired serious English fluency.
Hilariously, Conrad was even worse off. Few, claims Pinker, could understand
a word of his thick Slavonic English.
Incidentally, Alexey, did Stalin¹s Georgian accent arouse any sniggers?
Behind his back, of course? I¹ve heard that Mao Zedong¹s native Xiang
dialect was unintelligble to many Chinese. This explains, they say, the
absence of a strong Lincoln/Churchill-type tradition of speech-making in
Chinese politics, replaced by written speeches readable by all.
The Anglophone tolerance to intellectual foreign accents is well known. I
find VN¹s spoken English as enchanting as Einstein¹s! My mathematics
lecturer, Russian-born Abram Besicovitch, proudly told us that More peoples
speak English like what I do than like what you do, isn¹t it?¹
I had the pleasure of discussing this and other Nabokovian delicacies, in
the flesh, last Tuesday when Prof Victor Fet dropped in to see me in London
while en route to Moscow. Having enjoyed a similarly divine visitation from
Jansy Melon last month (illness, alas, prevented Carolyn Kunnin from
joining us), I want to thank the VN-Forum for these delightful and
unexpected membership side-benefits.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 29/07/2010 16:28, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Alexey Sklyarenko: Boyd...: "Stalin, a Georgian, admired Georgian folklore and
> here seems to be imagining the sweet raspberry taste of each execution and
> puffing out his chest as if it proves himself once again a Georgian hero."
> Although Stalin's nickname was Koba (after the hero of Kazbeghi's novel "The
> Patricide"), Dzhugashvili (whose assumed name comes from stal', "steel")
> desired to be not a Georgian, but Russian hero. Btw., Koba + t = Tobak. True,
> malina is Russian for "raspberry". But it can also mean "[to be] in clover"...
> Now, in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Canto Three, XXXIX, 7-14), in the scene
> travestied in Ada (1.2), girl servants picking berries are singing in chorus,
> so as their sly mouths wouldn't not eat in secret the seignioral berry. They
> also mention raspberries in their song...
>
> JM: Ah, Stalin's nickname was Koba! Things begin to make sense to me (the
> importance of Cabot/Tobak instead of Lowell).
>
> Carolyn Kunin commented on this matter in 2003 (but Lowell was left out, since
> the doggerel she remembered was applied to the Lodges).
> Here is Carolyn Kunin's old posting ( Wed, 2 Jul 2003 10:29:17 -0700), related
> to the Cabot doggerel.. Its subject is: "Carolyn Kunin notes on Alexey
> Sklyarenko's tobakami/sobakami essaylet in THE NABOKOVIAN #50 ," with
> D.B.Johnson 's EDNOTE.
> "I had never noticed that the "TOBAK(s)" and "dogs" were palindromes of the
> original CABOTs and GOD in the famous bit of doggerel that VN uses as the
> basis for his lines. As well, the TOBAK(s) echo the Russian word for dog
> SOBAKa. My thanks to Carolyn."
>
> CK's original note (Wednesday, June 11, 2003 12:36 PM) : "Among the tasty
> tid-bits in the latest Nabokovian are three notes from Alexey Sklyarenko, who
> continues to find more allusions to Russian literature in Ada. He intriguingly
> argues that some passages of dialogue in Ada show traces of translation from
> original Russian, particularly in the conversation between Van and Greg
> Erminin (Part III, chapter 3). However he has missed an allusion to an
> admittedly obscure bit of doggerel. In Ada "The Veens speak only to Tobaks/
> And Tobaks speak only to dogs." Although it may rhyme better in Russian
> (Tobakami/sobakami) the original is actually: Here's to good old Boston, the
> land of the Bean and the Cod, / Where Cabots speak only to Lodges, and the
> Lodges speak only to God. Also note the characteristically Nabokovian
> reversals of Cabot/Tobak and God/dog.
>
> But now I'm stuck with the Kabot(chnicks), Nikto, Nicot-Tobak(off), Botkin...
> Perhaps we can safely strike out Lowell now? And I can safely return to my
> borrowed book's "Homage to Eros" (a strange title, if one examines its staid
> contents).
>
> btw: C.Kunin also observed on Eberthella in the past, and linked it to Thomas
> Hardy's novel, " The Hand of Ethelberta"
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/