Dear List,
I remembered Lévi-Strauss' comments
restricting research after the etymology of proper names ( when he applied his
"symbolic machine" on Oedipus: Oedipus means Swollenfeet; Laius' means
Lame. Laius' father's name, Labdacus, means Lame-on-the-Left...).
I have not
his "Structural Anthropology" at hand from where I remember informations on
sexual or asexual reproduction and chtonic dragons, related to the undecidable
conundrums figured as "myths". Google only led me to his "The Elementary
Structures of Kinship (first published 1949, revised 1967, translated into
English 1969)". Anyway, any way can lead me back onto Nabokov. A chance
comment in google listings and I'm off.
"Freud and Levi-Strauss present the myth of Oedipus
from very different starting ...... insists that the proper translation
of Electra's name is "amber" ..."
Yes! Oedipus, Electra...Egyptian kings, Sir Walter
Scott, incest...Indeed.
A bunch of quotes from ADA:
As noted by
Darkbloom: p.25. lammer: amber (Fr: l’ambre), allusion
to electricity onto ...The
fire of Lucette’s amber runs through the night of Ada’s odor
and ardor, and stops at the threshold of Van’s lavender
goat; Rack's eyes ["the beautiful, amber, liquid, eloquent eyes..."] and
also Ada's [ a hundred barns blazed in
her amber-black eyes...Van appeared as incestuous Ramses the
Scotsman*], Ada's hair, a Nymphalis
carmen's wings, Marina's fear of lightning [" whom
certicle storms terrified even more than they did the
Antiamberians** of Ladore County"], Monaco's
amber-and-ruby bacon; ardis of speech and time related to
Lucette [He put on his tinted glasses ... as she prepared to ardis
into the amber. He wondered, in a mental footnote that might come handy some
day, if sunglasses or any other varieties of vision, which certainly twist our
concept of ‘space,’ do not also influence our style of speech], black
amber associations [ ‘It’s one of
the Vane sisters,’ and he awoke murmuring with professional appreciation the
oneiric word-play combining his name and
surname]
.....................................
* (a) Walter Scott's novel Lucia de
Lammermoor "is based on an actual incident that took place in 1669 in the
Lammermuir Hills area of Lowland Scotland. The real family involved were the
Dalrymples.The story concerns a feud between two families, the Ashtons and the
Ravenswoods."; (b) Three Egyptian squaws...long ebony
eye,thin amber arms...reproduction of a Theban fresco (no doubt pretty banal in
1420 B.C.), printed in Germany (Künstlerpostkarte Nr. 6034, says cynical Dr
Lagosse) (Ada).
** technologists (the so-called
Eggheads)... banning of an unmentionable ‘lammer.’...He worked for a couple of
hours on his Texture of Time, begun in the Dolomites at the Lammermoor (not the
best of his recent hotels).No pill could cope with that torment. There he
sprawled, curled up, uncurled, turned off and turned on the bedside light (a
gurgling new surrogate — real lammer having been forbidden again by 1930), and
physical despair pervaded his unresolvable being. (Ada)