[NPPF] Canto Four: Versipellis

s~Z keithsz at concentric.net
Mon Aug 11 16:44:27 CDT 2003


And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall
Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall.
Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill
I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill.
That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.

"It was in this way that the constellation of the Great Bear received its
name. The Greek work arktos, answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meant
originally any bright object, and was applied to the bear-for what reason it
would not be easy to state-and to that constellation which was most
conspicuous in the latitude of the early home of the Aryans. When the Greeks
had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi, they symbolized them
as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as Max Müller observes, "the name
of the Arctic regions rests on a misunderstanding of a name framed thousands
of years ago in Central Asia, and the surprise with which many a thoughtful
observer has looked at these seven bright stars, wondering why they were
ever called the Bear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of human
speech.""


     --also from "Werewolves and Swan-maidens" by John Fiske
     http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/1871aug/fiskej.htm

Now I understand what Shade was doing stumbling around the hill at night,
and why a regular vulgarian was happier just taking a piss and watching the
Milky Way. It's no fun being a versipel.

The regular vulgarian, I daresay,
Is happier: he sees the Milky Way
Only when making water. Then as now
I walked at my own risk: whipped by the bough,
Tripped by the stump. Asthmatic, lame and fat,
I never bounced a ball or swung a bat.

Even hidden in the literary allusions are the image of Shade as hound:

Kinbote: You appreciate particularly the purple passages?
Shade: Yes, my dear Charles, I roll upon them as a grateful mongrel on a
spot of turf fouled by a Great Dane.





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