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[Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Pnin versus Punin]]
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Subject: Re: [Fwd: Pnin versus Punin]
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:16:23 -0600
From: Earl Sampson <esamson3@attbi.com>
Reply-To: esampson@post.harvard.edu
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
References: <3D10A0D3.5020907@gte.net>
From: esampson@post.harvard.edu
Except that Punin's name is stressed on the first syllable, while the
incorrectly disyllabic Puh-nin would have to be stressed on the second,
and its first syllable would be schwah, not an "oo". :-)
"D. Barton Johnson" wrote:
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> Subject: Pnin versus Punin
> Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:59:37 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
> To: Nabokov <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
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> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (22 lines) ------------------
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>From: galya@u.washington.edu
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>This is most likely way out there and my apologies if it has been
>mentioned before -- but while writing my talk on Pnin for the July St.
>Petersburg Symposium, I came across again Nabokov's statement in
>_Strong Opinions_ about how the name Pnin should be pronounced: "... in
>English words starting with 'pn', one is prone to insert a supporting 'uh'
>sound -- 'Puh-nin' -- which is wrong" (52). Punin was, of course,
>Akhmatova's third (common-law) husband, and what makes this information
>potentially somewhat pertinent is the fact that Pnin is one of
>Liza's husbands, and in their Paris days Liza wrote "mauve poems...
>(courtesy Anna Akhmatov)" (45). During Liza's visit to Waindell,
>she actually recites her new poem for Pnin (Ia nadela temnoe plat'e) in
>which Nabokov obviously parodies Ak
>hmatova (much to her chagrine at the
>time). So this little joke, if intended, would not only make Liza into
>ersatz Akhmatova, it would make Pnin into ersatz Punin.
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>Galya Diment
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--
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
? Laura Riding