Stan Kelly-Bootle (off-list) writes to
JM:"...seeing Melampus mentioned by Matthew
Roth, I idly googled the name, finding matches in Homer and 37,000 other
places!" and, inspired by Stan's curiosity and A.Bouazza's
information, I did my own kind of wide-search and came up with what looks
like an elegant coincidence. Melampus, the name of Actaeon's dog with black
paws, who tore his owner to pieces after he'd been metamorphosed into a stag,
is linked to the similarly horned, agile gazelles or
antelopes!
Wikepedia explains that the "impala (Aepyceros
melampus - Greek: aipos "high", ceros "horn" + melas
"black" pous "foot") is a medium-sized African antelope. The name impala comes
from the Zulu language meaning "gazelle". They are found in savannas and thick
bushveld...in numbers of up to 2 million in Africa.
The name "Melampus" is mostly descriptive (black paws), like "Oedipus"
("swollen feet), but metamorphosis seems to leave its marks on some verbal
designations, too, when they don't follow a being's new incarnation,
such as the dog named "Cavall" (horse), or "Alce" (deer).
The question remains: why did Nabokov choose this particular pair among
the other bizarre dog names, chosen by Lord Byron? Perhaps Brian
Boyd is right in this aspect: "Even if we track down Cavall and Melampus,
and link them to the Enchanted Hunters, and through Cavall as King Arthur's dog
link to the Arthurian pattern that Nabokov seems to have attached from the first
to the Lolita theme, I am not satisfied with what we can interpret of either the
Enchanted Hunters or the Arthurian (and Merlinesque) pattern. Nabokov's patterns
have powerful implications, once we trace them far enough, and in the case of
Lolita I don't think I or anyone else has yet reached that point."
A
little research shows that, before Brian
Boyd "
nicely unpacked this reference to the hunting
dogs..." ( a slip, or a deliberate quip?), we must consider other
packs: Alfred Appel,Jr.'s annotations in 1970 and
A.Bouazza's additional interpretation (The Nabokovian,1994) for example.
A.Bouazza, in "Lord Byron's Pack", departs from Alfred
Appel,Jr.'s observations in "The Annotated Lolita", to ch.10,
p.89. As A.B quotes him: "
Alfred Appel, Jr., annotates the names of the
Farlows' dogs as follows: 'Cavall' comes from cavallo (a horse), and 'Melampus'
from the seer in Greek mythology who understood the tongue of dogs...[Nabokov]
thinks it was Lord Byron who had many bizarrely named dogs." (369) [It's on
p.373 in the 3rd.ed.,1991. GB] . AB explains that "
Melampus ( meaning
"black foot" in Greek) is the name of one of Acteon's dogs..." and that
"
Actaeon, metamorphosed into a stag by [spying on Diana]
the
goddess, is attacked by his own dogs...Melampus is also mentioned by C.Julius
Hyginus in his Fabellae (CLXXXI. Diana)... The amusing coincidence is that Jean
Farlow mentions Cavallo and Melampus after spying "artistically" on Humbert
Humbert and Charlotte lake-bathing. Finally, I would not be surprised if Lord
Byron's "bizarrely named dogs" had names like Nape, Alce, Borax.." In my
opinion, which I think |Matt Roth shares, Nabokov wasn't always candid towards
Alfred Appel Jr. to whom he downplayed Lord Byron's participation in his
Lolita chapter. Perhaps Lord Byron's "Pack" hides yet another
pattern... Then there's the recent article by Alain Didier Machu and
his indication concerning Nabokov's notes to Eugene Onegin.
Julio Cortázar's considerations about quotations, allusions and
references has been developped, in a more philosophical vein, by
J.L.Borges in "Otras Inquisiciones," ( which I'll soon be ready to
share with the VN-List), long before post-modernistic extensions
about the "death of the author."
Art may prescind an individual author when it comes to the "One" or an
"universal soul" (defended by Shelley) but style matters - and quotations,
too. Even, as Borges himself remembers, Ben Johnson's quilt made of
fragments of Seneca, Quintilianus, Justus Lipsio, Vives, Erasmo, Maquiavel,
Bacon and Escaligero, which obeys a discipline that is quite distant from
the famous anedocte about Oscar Wilde, who once exclaimed: " I wish I had
said that" and heard Whistler's reply: " You will, Oscar, you
will."
(JM)