Subject
Lehman's disease
Date
Body
From: didier.machu@univ-pau.fr
Yes indeed, Robert Cook must be right: Lehman stands for leman. Actually I
dimly remember having come across such an interpretation in some critical
study I cannot place, which only corroborates his guess. And the reason why
I mentioned Lake Leman is, I now realize, that Nabokov puns on "Leman for
lover" in the last part of Ada, a book meant 'for lemans and lay-men, not
for grave men and gravemen' (Van says this early in the book; the quotation
may not be quite right).
Personally I don't think Nabokov alludes to the mundane form of disease,
only to the mental derangement Knight, as a 'coeur d'amour epris', endures
(on account of that peculiar lady of the lake who causes the sedge to
wither from it!).
Yes indeed, Robert Cook must be right: Lehman stands for leman. Actually I
dimly remember having come across such an interpretation in some critical
study I cannot place, which only corroborates his guess. And the reason why
I mentioned Lake Leman is, I now realize, that Nabokov puns on "Leman for
lover" in the last part of Ada, a book meant 'for lemans and lay-men, not
for grave men and gravemen' (Van says this early in the book; the quotation
may not be quite right).
Personally I don't think Nabokov alludes to the mundane form of disease,
only to the mental derangement Knight, as a 'coeur d'amour epris', endures
(on account of that peculiar lady of the lake who causes the sedge to
wither from it!).