Carolyn Kunin [to Jansy's links related to "Nabokov and Taxonomy"]  Your post prompted me to look up this date, July 5, 1915, to see if anything exciting happened. Not really - but two days later the Lusitania The ship's name was taken from Lusitania, an ancient Roman province on the west of Iberian Peninsula the region that now is Portugal.was sunk, so that's something. Jean Cocteau was born July 5, 1899. I doubt Nabokov knew or cared...
 
Jansy Mello: Oh! Actually Kinbote mentioned Cocteau exactly on July 5! He must have been aware, then, that it was his birthday ( it'd be too much of a coincidence).
I actually lookd up the words about Proust that CK attributed to Cocteau (they might have been from Beckett's essay but I'd have to read it again to be sure), but got nowhere.
Line 181 ("Today"): "Speaking of novels," I said, "you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream......no, do not interrupt me, light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors, described — by Cocteau, I think — as ‘a mirage of suspended gardens,’ and, I have not yet finished..."
(I enjoyed yout pastiche about R. Jakobson...)
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive

All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.