Pale fire: Aunt Maud's book
was kept open in the letter "M", but it was a book of
poems ( which one?) and Shade mentioned the Index ( as you pointed
out). Hardly a natural place for a book to fall open.
Shade's dictionary, found in the garden, might
probably be another invention by Kinbote, or his elaborations
upon an unexplained, but simple, occurrence.
Were CK's observational powers as keen as
Nabokov's? Shouldn't we consider that the author, at this point,
is making an intromission by choosing a mirroring "M" in his
novel?
Stan, I'm still stunned by the subtle variations in
BardSpeak for "You and Thou." There's a problem with "tutoyages", perhaps
in other languages besides French. In Brazil its use comes close to
chaos.
In English it is easy to say I LOVE YOU and it's even
possible to signal it with I - A RED HEART- YOU. Not so in Portuguese.
You may write, and it must come out differently
from when you speak:
Eu amo você, amo você, eu te amo, te amo, amo-te,
lhe amo(argh), eu a amo, amo-a ...and so on. People who would never employ
the "tu" (in Rio everyone is democratically "você") often prefer to
say:: Eu te amo, even when the entire sentence uses a third person
singular. Probably loving is not enough.