JF: ... "the worst parts of
James Joyce", and quoting McDiarmid's "incremental exorbitance" and
"antecendently token of the venitseason"...
MR:
I'd be interested to see if N&Q says "venitseason" (as VN does) or
"venit season"...
VN: ( quoted by BB,
p.893,"from draft notes in Nabokov's archive"): " The
'little language' used by Jonathan Swift in his letter to Stella and the
'incoherent transactions' of Angus M'Diarmid the author of 'A description of the
Beauties of Edinample and Lochearnhead' 1841 are heard through the worst parts
of James Joyce like the 'incremental exorbitance' of a cataract 'which is
antecedently token of the venitseason.' "
DZ: VN could have found various references to Angus
MacDiarmid in Southey's letter. The latter's bizarre prose may have roused his
curiosity, but the few short phrases Southey quotes at different loci would
probably not have been sufficient to make the connection to 'Finnegans
Wake'..
JM: Perhaps future www-searches
after "Edswitch" will also provide a rote to hunt
Joyce, M'Diarmid and Swift...I remember VN
related the "worst parts of James Joyce" not only to
incremental exorbitances, but also to "excremental
inorbitances", probably a taste both JJ and Swift shared, not Southey and
Kinbote.
In Joris-Karl Huysmans's
À Rebours ("Against Nature"), Des Esseintes surrounds himself with
orchids and, if still I recollect his adventures, he also experimented
with rats, like Southey. Being an omnivorous reader VN would
certainly smell many anti-natural rats: did he ever mention
decadent Huysmans through Kinbote?
btw: Interesing. We have Angus M'Diarmid
describing the surface beauties of Lochearnhead, while Hazel
experimented with the depths of Lochanhead. Actually only Hazel's locus allows for
the inellegant pun: "Loch:hole in German;
head"...