Jerry: for us mathematicians/logicians/philosophers, Quine is as familiar as Shakespeare or Jehovah! Ditto Tarski and L[slashed]ukasiewicz! As soon as Jansy cited “Quine the Swine” I reached out for my nearby well-thumbed copy of W V Quine’s memoirs (The Time of My Life — An Autobiography) to confirm my recollection that Nabokov gets a mention. It’s quite brief (p 348) but establishes that they were indeed “acquainted.” WVQ is staying at Hans Epstein’s house near Lugano, 1968. He admires Hans’ “built-in butterfly racks” adding that “Hans, like his friend and my acquaintance Nabokov, was an ardent amateur [my emphasis] lepidopterist.” I’m not sure if it’s worth pursuing this matter. It’s no surprise that VN and WVQ were “acquainted” (quite a vague predicate!) since both were “prominent persons” at Harvard (and also at Stanford but I’m not sure of the dates); but it throws little light on VN’s choice of names. One might as well postulate the influence of the VAN in Willard’s name -- another allusionist paper-chase for some! BTW: Note that Quine’s famous “Quiddities” exploits playful alliteration (cf Quine and Quilty). It’s also unsurprising that both VN and WVQ shared linguistic talents and a love of word-play. Quine’s au pair, a Mexican lass called Tecla, is subjected to anagrams: “Set the table, Tacle!” “Bring the treacle, Tecal!” “Where’s the meat, Cleat?” “Take my plate, Clate!” “What’s for repas, Eclat?”
If there’s any record of them earnestly discussing Ontology or the extremely arcane aspects of Quine’s Mathematical Logic, I’ld love to know. Quine’s autobiography has a Nabokovian devotion to detail. Had the two exchanged significant thoughts, I would have expected some mention.
PS: Does DN remember HANS EPSTEIN? Strange career: left academe to join the CIA; then married into money & retired to live in Miglieglia.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 17/12/2008 13:25, "NABOKV-L" <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU> wrote:
> Jerry Friedman writes:
>
> It's impossible for me, and I suspect was for VN, to see
> a mention of Swinburne's "Dolores" without thinking
> about sadism and masochism, the subject of the poem and
> one of Swinburne's interests. (I've read contradictory
> things on how far it was one of his practices. No doubt
> a good biography would settle this--or maybe two good
> biographies.) I don't see how Oursler or the reviewer
> who quotes him could have missed it either.
>
> I can't see the surname "Quine" without thinking about
> the Harvard philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, who
> wrote about topics that might have interested Nabokov,
> such as translation and "word and object". But I
> know little about Quine, and can't tell you whether
> Nabokov would have known him or known of his ideas
> when he wrote /Lolita/.
>
> By the way, Quine was talented at languages, and according
> to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine>,
> he spent part of World War II in Brazil lecturing on
> logic in Portuguese.
>
> Another Quine is Richard Quine, an American actor and
> director who had directed a number of films by the time
> /Lolita/ was written. In the inevitable VN coincidence,
> his last directing credit was /The Prisoner of Zenda/
> (1979), starring "Peter Sellers & Peter Sellers".
>
> I'm afraid I may have only provided more red herrings.
>
> On another subject, what I find strange about Nabokov's
> comparison of Ultima Thule and Zembla is how little Zemblan
> natural history there is in /Pale Fire/. Except for the
> capercaillie and woodcock shooting and the low altitude
> of timberline, it could be pretty much anywhere in
> the north temperate zone. Nabokov must have been
> telling us those bogs and butterflies were in his
> imagination.
>
> Jerry Friedman
>