Carolyn Kunin [ to JM's
Your
alliterative games are great fun...] But my "games" are not
alliterative at all! Fulmerford = Dr Lemuroff is an anagramatic play (n.b.
to our anagrams master, this is a "krugliy" anagram, if I may put it that way).
The rest of the path down Lemur Lane, to make an alliterative detour, is -
I don't exactly know what it is - a series of associations of submarine and
other lemurian associations. And Priscilla Meyer's link between Lehmann's and
occultism is surely an important key. Throw in her "pale kings, princes and pale
warriors" and you have another lane to travel - a fire road
perhaps?
Jansy Mello:
Right-o ! A newly invented krugliy mix. However, there's no pale
"Franklin" lane for me, but a sinister krugly bend.
Our anagram-Master has been pullling my ears
again because I didn't notice right away how he moves from puddle
onto kidney-shaped pool of spilled milk - while practicing
maneuvers that are belied in his pedagogic Foreword* and
revealed along the way. In fact, Nabokov intended the Krug
mnemonic "signature," that connects the recovered sensation of creamy
and blue in Krug's mug to Adam Krug himself ( cf.
"Mugakrad-Gumradka" after Paduk's erasures)
Knowing no Russian, I certainly miss out on most of what's going on in this novel. Sometimes there's an explanation, such as Krug's infantile "term of endearment" directed to Paduk: dragotzennyĭ,, itself so reminiscent of that other ring found by Gollum//Smeagol in J.RR Tolkien's novels.
I can only surmise that an all-seeing "milk" must be
very important, as in the (just quoted) lemurian paragraph in
ADA: "What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle
or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling
the written word ‘deified’?"
I
selected three milky ways:
1."Yes, it reflects a portion
of pale blue sky — mild infantile shade of blue — taste of milk in my mouth
because I had a mug of that colour thirty-five years ago." ( during his "milk-tooth
days"...)
2. 'One brandy and a glass of milk,' said Krug and hung
up.[ ]'More than twenty-five years, Mugakrad,' said Paduk after a
silence. 'You have remained what you were, but the world spins on. Gumakrad,
poor little Gumradka.'
3. "...The various parts of my comparative paradise — the
bedside lamp, the sleeping tablets, the glass of milk — looked with perfect
submission into my eyes...death was but a question of style."
The obvious links to occultism popping here and there seem to
be another deviant path from his particular "rosebud", like the so
very reasonable explanations about the makings of "Lolita" or "Bend
Sinister"...
.................................................................
* - "The plot starts to breed in the
bright broth of a rain puddle. The puddle is observed by Krug from a window of
the hospital where his wife is dying. The oblong pool, shaped like a cell that
is about to divide, reappears subthematically throughout the novel, as an ink
blot in Chapter Four, an inkstain in Chapter Five, spilled milk in Chapter
Eleven, the infusoria-like image of ciliated thought in Chapter Twelve, the
footprint of a phosphorescent islander in Chapter Eighteen, and the imprint a
soul leaves in the intimate texture of space in the closing paragraph. The
puddle thus kindled and rekindled in Krug's mind remains linked up with the
image of his wife not only because he had contemplated the inset sunset from her
death-bedside, but also because this little puddle vaguely evokes in him my link
with him: a rent in his world leading to another world of tenderness, brightness
and beauty" (BS, Foreword).