Subject
Re: Fw: Saint Francis Xavier and Pale Fire
From
Date
Body
On 19/7/06 20:00, "Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> I could not find former references in the List to Saint Francis, but I
> remember postings on this subject.
> I thought this image of St. Francis, with a sun shining on the pale moon of
> his halo quite suggestive.
> The Saint's name brings together John (Francis) Shade and Kinbote ( Charles
> Xavier )
> Jansy
>
>
> Dear Jansy:
>
> I¹m more convinced of a plausible link between the textually contiguous¹
> names of Shade and Kinbote than by your suggested pun linking Barts and
> Beardsley. In ³Signs and Symbols² there may be warning against rash
> connectionism¹:
>
> ³The system of his delusions had been the subject of an elaborate paper in a
> scientific monthly, but long before that she and her husband had puzzled it
> out for themselves. Referential mania,¹ Herman Brink had called it.²
>
> Then, again, I could be on the brink of committing the same sin of manic¹
> cross referencing? As DN oft reminds us: he sees his dad smiling from above at
> our donnish capers.
>
> I find another link to the thread that refuses to die -- how the borrower¹
> can or should pronounce borrowed¹ names. Your Saint has blessed an eponymous
> Catholic school in Liverpool but the locals call it Saint Francis EKS-avier
> with the famous Scouse fricative K. It makes for a colourful f**k off¹ which
> is a monosyllabic FKOFF on Merseyside.
> I mention this to show that some Anglophones are unfazed by Slavic consonantal
> clusters such as DN¹s initial DM[itri] or VK¹ as in ³V KANADOO² (to
> Canada¹). For a decent Russian rolling of the Rs [sic] [in Dmitri and Vladimir
> etc] you must travel to Scotland or Wales. (BTW: the ll¹ in a Welsh Mello is
> a real challenge for outsiders.)
>
> Interestingly (to some), fans here handle the prename of the Liverpool FC
> player XAVI Alonso with stunning precision. Not EKS-AVI, HAVI, SHAVI or DJAVI
> but the proper Basque CHAVI!
>
> A final [?] thought on the sweet sound of NABOKOV, since I helped re-trigger
> the recent re-debate. Note that my interest was VN¹s reaction to the variants
> rather than the variants themselves.
>
> The two-edged fact, DN, is that your iconic SirName has been lovingly
> globalized and branded rather like Guiness or CocaCola. [fnote 1]
>
> Each isogloss orders and gets its omnipresent drink with a wide variety of g¹s
> ui¹s k¹s o¹s l¹s and a¹s [fnote 2]
> (Some may be (wrongly?) tempted to decline [sic] KocaKola as a singular [sic]
> compound [sic] feminine noun: Daite mne Koka-Koloo?)
>
> Similarly, the jolie servante in W H Smith directs me to the right shelves
> when I ask for VN¹s books. If I use my near-immaculate Russian intonation,
> she¹s likely to say ³You mean NAHbuhkoV?² Which, of course, is true! [fnote 3]
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
> fnote 1: ³In fact, I don't seem to belong to any clear-cut continent. I'm the
> shuttlecock above
> the Atlantic, and how bright and blue it is there, in my private sky,
> far from the pigeonholes and the clay pigeons.² (1968 BBC Interview)
>
> fnote 2: Very few non-Anglophones can, or even try to, mimic the Yankee
> diphthongs imposed on the original Spanish coca¹ or W. African kola.¹
> Likewise, few Anglophones manage to achieve the crisper, less diphthongal
> stressed¹ vowels of say French and Russian. The bane of Berlitz is correcting
> ³EEUHl Faay Boowh² (³Il fait beau²)
>
> fnote 3: Just assuming VN¹s claim that Ghengiz Khan fathered the first
> Nabokov, it¹s fun (but tiring) to compare the phonetic systems of Russia and
> TatarStan (no relation!). The Tater language (formerly Cyrilized¹ in CCCP by
> Uncle Joe but now appearing with Romanized and Arabic scripts) enjoys
> rounding¹ vowel harmony with no neutral vowels. The putatively original¹
> Nabokov would, I posit, sound quite different from either Webster or DN: no
> schwas anywhere, but no stressed o¹ either. All three syllables
> democratically even.
>
>
>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
> I could not find former references in the List to Saint Francis, but I
> remember postings on this subject.
> I thought this image of St. Francis, with a sun shining on the pale moon of
> his halo quite suggestive.
> The Saint's name brings together John (Francis) Shade and Kinbote ( Charles
> Xavier )
> Jansy
>
>
> Dear Jansy:
>
> I¹m more convinced of a plausible link between the textually contiguous¹
> names of Shade and Kinbote than by your suggested pun linking Barts and
> Beardsley. In ³Signs and Symbols² there may be warning against rash
> connectionism¹:
>
> ³The system of his delusions had been the subject of an elaborate paper in a
> scientific monthly, but long before that she and her husband had puzzled it
> out for themselves. Referential mania,¹ Herman Brink had called it.²
>
> Then, again, I could be on the brink of committing the same sin of manic¹
> cross referencing? As DN oft reminds us: he sees his dad smiling from above at
> our donnish capers.
>
> I find another link to the thread that refuses to die -- how the borrower¹
> can or should pronounce borrowed¹ names. Your Saint has blessed an eponymous
> Catholic school in Liverpool but the locals call it Saint Francis EKS-avier
> with the famous Scouse fricative K. It makes for a colourful f**k off¹ which
> is a monosyllabic FKOFF on Merseyside.
> I mention this to show that some Anglophones are unfazed by Slavic consonantal
> clusters such as DN¹s initial DM[itri] or VK¹ as in ³V KANADOO² (to
> Canada¹). For a decent Russian rolling of the Rs [sic] [in Dmitri and Vladimir
> etc] you must travel to Scotland or Wales. (BTW: the ll¹ in a Welsh Mello is
> a real challenge for outsiders.)
>
> Interestingly (to some), fans here handle the prename of the Liverpool FC
> player XAVI Alonso with stunning precision. Not EKS-AVI, HAVI, SHAVI or DJAVI
> but the proper Basque CHAVI!
>
> A final [?] thought on the sweet sound of NABOKOV, since I helped re-trigger
> the recent re-debate. Note that my interest was VN¹s reaction to the variants
> rather than the variants themselves.
>
> The two-edged fact, DN, is that your iconic SirName has been lovingly
> globalized and branded rather like Guiness or CocaCola. [fnote 1]
>
> Each isogloss orders and gets its omnipresent drink with a wide variety of g¹s
> ui¹s k¹s o¹s l¹s and a¹s [fnote 2]
> (Some may be (wrongly?) tempted to decline [sic] KocaKola as a singular [sic]
> compound [sic] feminine noun: Daite mne Koka-Koloo?)
>
> Similarly, the jolie servante in W H Smith directs me to the right shelves
> when I ask for VN¹s books. If I use my near-immaculate Russian intonation,
> she¹s likely to say ³You mean NAHbuhkoV?² Which, of course, is true! [fnote 3]
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
> fnote 1: ³In fact, I don't seem to belong to any clear-cut continent. I'm the
> shuttlecock above
> the Atlantic, and how bright and blue it is there, in my private sky,
> far from the pigeonholes and the clay pigeons.² (1968 BBC Interview)
>
> fnote 2: Very few non-Anglophones can, or even try to, mimic the Yankee
> diphthongs imposed on the original Spanish coca¹ or W. African kola.¹
> Likewise, few Anglophones manage to achieve the crisper, less diphthongal
> stressed¹ vowels of say French and Russian. The bane of Berlitz is correcting
> ³EEUHl Faay Boowh² (³Il fait beau²)
>
> fnote 3: Just assuming VN¹s claim that Ghengiz Khan fathered the first
> Nabokov, it¹s fun (but tiring) to compare the phonetic systems of Russia and
> TatarStan (no relation!). The Tater language (formerly Cyrilized¹ in CCCP by
> Uncle Joe but now appearing with Romanized and Arabic scripts) enjoys
> rounding¹ vowel harmony with no neutral vowels. The putatively original¹
> Nabokov would, I posit, sound quite different from either Webster or DN: no
> schwas anywhere, but no stressed o¹ either. All three syllables
> democratically even.
>
>
>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm