Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008924, Sun, 16 Nov 2003 17:58:55 -0800

Subject
Fw: the Bruegel picture
Date
Body

----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: D. Barton Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 12:36 PM
Subject: the Bruegel picture


You can see the painting and a schematic reproduction with numbers that refer to each proverb. Number one, for example, represents pies or cookies on the roof and this means " abundance" . The proverb itself is " the cookies are on the roof"... Below there is a broom and it signals two proverbs " to be married by the broom" ( to live maritally without a church blessing, not caring for appearances ) or " the broom is at the door" ( it means the inhabitants of the house are away ), and so on until number 118!