Jansy Mello: Have I misread
PF's "crapula" as a word in Zemblan? Did Kinbote mention it
to indicate the OED, Burguess or...?
Barrie Akin: I bow to A. Bouazza's compendious knowledge
of Burgess.But returning to PF, I assume that Kinbote was using crapula as an
English word, simply because it is so romance based, whereas Zemblan words
elsewhere in PF are usually germanic/nordic/slavic based.
A. Bouazza: There is no suggestion that it is a Zemblan
word (although, Zemblan would have words of Latin and Greek origin like
any European language). It is a “learned” word, just like skoramis,
psychopompos, parhelion etc. in the novel. Here is the context: “I still hoped there had been a mistake, and Shade would telephone.
It was a bitter wait, and the only effect that the bottle of champagne I drank
all alone now at this window, now at that, had on me was a bad crapula
(hangover).”
Jansy
Mello: What lead me to Zemblan was Kinbote's care to
explain the word in a parenthesis and I failed to notice that Zemblan
words are distinguished by means of italics (at least, in the examples that
follow): "And at a picnic for international children a Zemblan moppet cried to
her Japanese friend: Ufgut, ufgut, velkam
ut Semblerland! (Adieu, adieu, till we meet in Zembla!)"; "I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the
throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut
mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil
thirsty)". whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far
away")":
Since Kinbote didn't add an
explanation to "skoramis, psychopompos" or
"parhelia," my misreading may, perhaps, be
forgiven.