JM: rather than “defying computation,” kindergarten maths shows that there are at most
21 x 5 = 105 c-v (consonant-vowel) combinations from ba to zu, with 21 groups of 5 “rhymes” (ba to za; be to ze; ... ; bu to zu)
21 x 5 x 21 = 2,205 c-v-c combinations from bab to zuz, with about 21 groups of 105 “rhymes (bab to zab; ... ; buz to zuz).
21 x 5 x 21 x 5 x 21 = 231,525 c-v-c-v-c combinations from babab to zuzuz, with 2,205 groups of 105 final-syllable v-c rhymes; 105 groups of 2,205 final-sylllable c-v-c rhymes; and 21 groups of 11,025 v-c-v-c bisyllabic rhymes. (Some of these rhyming counts overlap, e.g., the v-c-v-c rhyme “b-abab/b-azab” is also counted in the v-c rhyme group containing “bab-ab/baz-ab.”
I say ‘at most’ and ‘about’ because some of our consonant letters often represent the same sound, e.g., c and k; s and z; while occasionally there are consonants that are not sounded at all! Also, “rhyme” is a subject to synchronic and diachronic vagaries.
Next, you check against the OED, and find that only, say, 30,000 of the 231,525 c-v-c-v-c possible “words” have, so far, been been recorded and assigned citations, definitions & etymologies.
SO, considering that your examples come from the same (parochial!) Indo-European language family, one might claim that the real mystery is why people are mystified or sent into transcendental shock at inevitable “coincidences” among what are relatively small numbers of possibilities. This is not to take the fun out of finding the English “crown/cow/crow” triplet echoed in Russian (as I mentioned in an earlier posting, the computer can churn out such examples, plus playful anagrams and arbitrarily long palindromes, by the thousand -- it’s ceased to be a creative exercise, although, of course, the computer does not enjoy its findings as much as we do [so far]!) but to keep things in perspective and avoid seeking some other-worldly agency. Mon Dieu, there’s no end of real, non-computable mysteries out there to haunt us. Of significance to Nabokovian “general pattern seekers” is this week’s Nobel Physics Prize. First, you may have to read Ian Stewart’s “Fearful Symmetry,” to get a feel for “symmetry breaking” for which the 3 Nobelists were honoured. Briefly and paradoxically, too much symmetry is a bad thing! Too many patterns are possible, and nothing of interest emerges. Our particular Big Bang was nothing to write home about until its symmetry broke down splitting the previously single, unified force into the four basic forces we enjoy today. When the CERN collider is up’n’running, we’ll be closer to replicating those initial conditions and hopefully learning more about how we came to be here as bundles of heavy molecules, enjoying VN’s plots and word-games.
Jansy: you’ve probably heard it said that “Puns are the lowest form of humour.” I suppose some puns are weaker (more obvious, or more “contrived”) than others, but it’s quite subjective to rate them. VN seems to be using Kinbote’s evaluation of Shade’s pun as a sign that VN himself was not over-proud of the peut-etre/potato joke.
Re-weeping willow: for some reason, the only botanical tree-name I know without googling is SALIX BABYLONICA, which invokes Verdi’s Nabucco, Va Penseiro.
Whence endless word-sound interactions: I certainly endorse SES’s comment “ ... A typical Nabokovian device, that visual memory becomes animated by sound.” (p 73 “How Nabokov Rewrote America,” Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, in the never-far-from-my-bedside Cambridge Companion to Nabokov). Once linked in the mind, there’s no escaping the sequence L-o-l-i-t-a from images of Humbert succumbing to her labio-dental temptations, even if the movies prudishly substitute ice-creams and lollipops.
I should add that Darwin and others have find common cross-cultural features in HomSap’s body-language and facial expressions (but some smiles are snarls!) yet it’s a stretch [sic] to extend these to universal mappings of word-sounds to emotions. “Please” and the photographer’s “Say Cheese” may both stretch the lips as in a smile in many languages, but so do “Greed” and “Bleed!” “Bitte” and “Bitter” also look and sound the same to me. And what if you hate “Cheese?” Our in-family joke when taking pictures is “Say Gorganzola!” This relates to JF’s recent confession that he does not share VN’s sensayuma, and the subseqent problem of defining “humour” in any objective way. Most attempts (e.g., Freud’s) turn out to be the least funny projects imaginable. Explaining “jokes” has been compared, unfairly, with killing and dissecting a butterfly to see how it works.
Discuss with special reference to a great novelist who enjoyed tom-peeping dead insects’ genitalia. What would Freud make of that? Strongly recommended: Jed Rubenfeld’s semi-factual “The Interpretation of Murder,” for insights into the Jung/Freud fall-out, Freud’s anti-Americanism, and esp. the PLOT based on Freud’s juicy, controversial “Dora” case history (young woman sexually harassed by her father’s best friend — apparently influencing Freud’s Oedipal interpretations of female hysteria. Dora catches a glimpse of the best-friend’s wife fellating her father (why do these Austrians have all the fun?) -- is she shocked or jealous?
Recent (for me) sighting:
“ ’Les papillons ne sont que des fleurs envolees un jour de fete,’ ecrivait Georges Sand qui, comme Nabokov, Gerard de Nerval ou Colette, vouait une veritable passion aux papillons. Elle est feerique, en effet, la beaute de ces insectes, dont l’evocation rime avec elegance, legerete, raffinement et poesie.” (Les Papillons d’Europe (Rhopaloceres et Heteroceres Diurnes),”introduction by Gerald Hibon, Delachaux et Nestle, 1989)
skb
On 13/10/2008 01:34, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Stan K-B: the prolific & weird mathematician Paul Erdo:s [...] was fond of word-games. He pointed out that “old/cold” was a rare, sad rhyming pair that also rhymed in German: “alt/kalt.”[...] Question remains: the reason for VN’s aversion to Finnegans Wake? Did Joyce go TOO FAR, OVER-teeming with allusions, puns, spoonerisms, anagrams[...]
Kinbote:"There exists to my knowledge one absolutely extraordinary, unbelievably elegant case, where not only two[mountain-fountain], but three words are involved[...] A newspaper account of a Russian tsar’s coronation had, instead of korona (crown), the misprint vorona (crow), and when next day this was apologetically "corrected," it got misprinted a second time as korova (cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-crow-cow series and the Russian korona-vorona-korova series is something that would have, I am sure, enraptured my poet. I have seen nothing like it on lexical playfields and the odds against the double coincidence defy computation [...] Goethe’s two lines opening the poem [Wind-Kind] come out most exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent-enfant), in my own language [vett-dett]."
JM: VN, like Shade, was enraptured by hidden resonances and linguistic aerobics but it is my impression that he harbored a sense of "sacred mystery" towards words and coincidences. From this perspective Joyce's wake would come very close to heresy.
Perhaps this opinion would echo only Kinbote's for, concerning Shade's play with "The Great Potato" (Rabelais' "le grand peut-être), Kinbote noted that it was an "execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to stress lack of respect for Death." In connection to "If" (yew in French, weeping willow in Zemblan, perhaps in IPH) he added: "I am also obliged to observe that I strongly disapprove of the flippancy with which our poet treats, in this canto, certain aspects of spiritual hope which religion alone can fulfill."