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Re: Hugh MacDiarmid's "Lallans" and Nabokov's " my Lalage"?
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Jansy asks whether "lalage" is related to the English "lullaby." Yes, they are distantly related through the Indoeuropean root *la, which means to talk or babble.
This has doubtless been pointed out before, but Nabokov's reference to Lolita as "my Lalage" is likely an allusion to one of Horace's odes (2.5, Nondum subacta ferre iugum valet). You can read of a translation of this ode with notes by the classicist Steven Willett at
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/horawill.shtml
(click on 2.5, and then on the link for the notes)
Willett writes in part:
"Over the years certain factors in this ode have occasionally deflected readers from its true emotional purpose: (1) the treatment of sexuality in animalistic terms that clearly makes men robustly active and women dependently passive, (2) the metaphorical transformation of Lalage to heifer and unripe grapes respectively, (3) the emotional patronization of a restrained older man toward an immature girl--almost, dare one say, a Nabokovian nymphet--and (4) the imagined transformation of a mature Lalage into a sexual huntress whose activity, as the first stanza shows, is strictly in the chase, not the capture."
Mary
jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
>
> I didn't find what I was looking for, but one of the
> sentences I had underlined revealed a reference that
> is probably connected to VN's use of MacDiarmid's
> "Lallans" or Swift's baby-talk.
> It has to do with the soft-sounding "L" in "Lolita",
> so I assume. Nabokov named his book "my Lalage"*, in
> 1972, to an anonymous interviewer:
> "Some fifteen years ago, when the Soviets were
> hypocritically denouncing Pasternak's novel...the
> badgered and bewildered author was promoted by the
> American press to the rank of an iconic
> figure...when his Zhivago vied with my Lalage for
> the top rungs of the best-sellers
> ladder..."(SO,Vintage,Ch.22,p.205)
> * - from the Greek: rumor of murmuring waters. In
> English is is there a derivation in the
> word "lullaby"?.
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This has doubtless been pointed out before, but Nabokov's reference to Lolita as "my Lalage" is likely an allusion to one of Horace's odes (2.5, Nondum subacta ferre iugum valet). You can read of a translation of this ode with notes by the classicist Steven Willett at
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/horawill.shtml
(click on 2.5, and then on the link for the notes)
Willett writes in part:
"Over the years certain factors in this ode have occasionally deflected readers from its true emotional purpose: (1) the treatment of sexuality in animalistic terms that clearly makes men robustly active and women dependently passive, (2) the metaphorical transformation of Lalage to heifer and unripe grapes respectively, (3) the emotional patronization of a restrained older man toward an immature girl--almost, dare one say, a Nabokovian nymphet--and (4) the imagined transformation of a mature Lalage into a sexual huntress whose activity, as the first stanza shows, is strictly in the chase, not the capture."
Mary
jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
>
> I didn't find what I was looking for, but one of the
> sentences I had underlined revealed a reference that
> is probably connected to VN's use of MacDiarmid's
> "Lallans" or Swift's baby-talk.
> It has to do with the soft-sounding "L" in "Lolita",
> so I assume. Nabokov named his book "my Lalage"*, in
> 1972, to an anonymous interviewer:
> "Some fifteen years ago, when the Soviets were
> hypocritically denouncing Pasternak's novel...the
> badgered and bewildered author was promoted by the
> American press to the rank of an iconic
> figure...when his Zhivago vied with my Lalage for
> the top rungs of the best-sellers
> ladder..."(SO,Vintage,Ch.22,p.205)
> * - from the Greek: rumor of murmuring waters. In
> English is is there a derivation in the
> word "lullaby"?.
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/