"leaf=sarcophagus?"
' 'The Greek etymology of "sarcophagus" is "flesh
eater". However, this is not really the Egyptian interpretation. In their
ancient language, the sarcophagus might be called neb ankh (possessor of
life).'
I had never given this matter any
thought but the comment above makes sense when it points out
that the Egyptian interpretation refers to "possessor of life". We might never be able to find out if VN had wanted
to call our attention to this contradictory use of the
word. Perhaps the green leaf for the green moth might have represented
green=death, as Don suggested, but I don't think so.
The leaf in the Egyptian-sense of a
sarcophagus holding "a dead and shriveled-up cocoon" could mean that,
although "dead" ( emptied of its living moth), it is still the possessor of
life since the soul ( the moth) has fled but one day re-incarnation
shall take place and join body and soul again...Apparently this is something VN believed in, at least if we follow
certain authorities on Pale Fire, but perhaps he didn't... These lines on
sarcophagus appear as part of Kinbote's commentary and the
original indicates a book of verses [Shakespeare's? Hamlet ( human
skull) or Othello ( Moor )] and a glass-encased lagoon ( Lake Omega,
perhaps? Snow-White's coffin, a kind of cocoon?)
And yet both versions keep the
sonorous "still life in her style" ( a half-encased life,
crystal-coffin silent life!) .
The German, Dutch and English name a "still
life" what we, in Portuguese and in many other Latin-derived
languages, call a "dead nature" ( nature morte). It is
easier to believe Nabokov had this contrast in mind ( living/dead) than
"sarcophagus" ( in Greek or following Egyptian's belief in
afterlife ).He did speak French and his ability to think up words
simultaneously in different languages seems to be undisputable...
From Wikipedia: "the expression 'nature morte'
indicates a subject organized by inanimate objects ( fruits, flowers, vases) or
dead animals and later, by metonymy, a work ( painting, photograph) that
represents a "nature morte". The term came into use at the end of the XVII
Century. Until then the expression used by Vasari ( "cose naturali") for the
motifs painted by Giovanni da Undine. In 1650 in the Netherlands the
expression stilleven appeared, followed by the German
(Stilleben) and the English (still-life) and is translated as
"Silent Life".