Jansy: Eureka, or rather my-lum-reek-a. (My chimney smokes; see prev. postings on Lallans)

“Words on Words, Quotations about Language and Languages,” David Crystal & Hilary Crystal, Penguin, 2000 (found lurking on my own shelves after all.)

7 entries by Nabokov (4 from Strong Opinions.) 6 each from G Flaubert and J Joyce. A Pope gets a mammoth 17. J UPDIKE? Just ONE. Nya nya!

Excellent Indexes: by author; by source; by theme. D Crystal, as  I may have mentioned, is my favourite linguist, since he cites fondly from my Scouse translation of Omar Khayaam in his Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language.  He’s not infallible, of course. I had to correct his spelling of Finnegans Wake some years ago. And he (or his wife Hilary) has Homer- nodded again: in Words on Words, VN’s Harvard acquaintance, philosopher-logician WILLARD Van Orman Quine  appears in six places as WILLIAM! Quine wins 2 quotes worthy of Nabokovians’ attention:

“To define an expression is, paradoxically speaking, to explain how to get along without it. To define is to eliminate.”

“Pending a clarification of the notion of meaning, linguists ... are in the situation of not knowing what they are talking about.”

(B Russell goes further: “Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”)

I’ll copy out VN’s chosen 7 when time allows. Everything stops here while Brasil play Italy (soccer)

Stan Kelly-Bootle

On 05/02/2009 22:44, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

Stan Kelly -Bootle: [The  two (Oxford) Anthologies of "Humour" and of "XXth Century Poets" I consulted carry no Nabokov [...] Where could I find out about which anthologies in English included VN among American, English-speaking, novelists or the Russian poets and authors?] "...I can report that he flourishes in most of the FAMOUS QUOTATIONS collections I've come across. One of the collections (Oxford Univ. Press, I think) was devoted specifically to Lit & Lang aphorisms (or "pithy sayings," he lisped!). Dozens of Nabokovian quips, which one has the feeling were deliberately polished with such collections in mind.

JM: My access to specialized libraries is limited, as you know, so your ellucidation helped to balance my overall impression. For ex, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979), under V. Nabokov, quotes: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." Not very inspiring!
//snip
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