Offered as a trivial stocking-filler, wishing Dmitri and all Nabokovians a Cool Yool.
What matters in allusionology, Jansy, is deciding which of the many pointers lurking behind every word can be linked to plausibly intended targets. E.g., “Brazil Nut” as a reference to the soccer player Ronaldo is tempting but inappropriate to SLSK. In the SLSK context of finding hidden objects, one immediately thinks of the “Brazil Nut Effect” which Wiki explains thus:
“The Brazil nut effect is the name given to a phenomenon in which the largest particles end up on the surface when a granular material containing a mixture of objects of different sizes is shaken.”
The name comes from the fact that in a mixed bag of peanuts and Brazil nuts, the larger nuts end up on top. VN may have had some literary analogues in mind?
Supporting your playful link via selenium to the moon, VN might well have read any number of 1950/60s faddish books on “Supplementary Minerals.” Typically:
“Selenium is found in organ meats, seafood, lean meat, dairy products, and chicken. Whole grains, such as oatmeal and brown rice, Brazil nuts, brewer’s yeast, broccoli, garlic, kelp, molasses, onions, and various herbs are good plant sources of selenium, but only if they are grown in selenium-rich soil.” [The RDA is 50 micrograms per day, which you can get with a normal diet. Expensive supplements are rarely needed.]
BUT, would a mention of any of the 15+ sources of selenium ALSO provide a reasonable pointer to that element, and then on to its literary lunar associations? If so, perhaps VN might have compounded our puzzlement by writing PALE BROCCOLI. It’s hard to quantify, but I feel that Nabokov “plays fair.” Cryptic crosswords vary in their fiendishness, but regular solvers develop an instinct for the tricks of word-mangling employed by each puzzle setter. I rate VN at about the London TIMES level, i.e., harder than the Telegraph, but no Torquemada. Of course, with crosswords (and chess problems) you usually know when you’ve solved them, while literary puzzles such as PALE MOLASSES may not have a single, universally satisfying climax.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 19/12/2008 03:14, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Dear List,
The label of a jar containing peeled Brazil-nuts for my Xmas baking showed a lunatic bee holding a sign: "rich in selenium".
//schnip
Did he [VN] ever learn that it was rich in "selenium" and...does it matter?