NPPF: CANTO ONE (1)

[Michael Joseph]

Good! But see also Nab's NYT essay

http://www2.eunet.lv/library/koi/NABOKOW/Inter16.txt

><snip><

You are, I am told, at work on a new novel. Do you have
a working title? And could you give me a precis of what  it  is
all about?

     The  working  title  of  the  novel  I am composing now is
Transparent Things, but a  precis  would  be  an  opaque
shadow.  The  faade  of  our  hotel  in Montreux is being
repainted, and I have reached the ultimate south of Portugal in
an effort to find a quiet spot (pace  the  booming  surf
and rattling wind) where to write. This I do on scrambled index
cards  (my text existing already there in invisible lead) which
I gradually fill in and sort out, using up in the process  more
pencil  sharpeners  than  pencils; but I have spoken of this in
several earlier questionnaires-- a word whose spelling  I  have
to  look  up  every  time;  my  traveling  companion, Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary, 1970, defines, by the way, "Quassia"  as
derived from "Quassi," a Surinam Negro slave of the 18th centu!
ry, who discovered a remedy for worms in white children. On the
other  hand,  none of my own coinages or reapplications appears
in this lexicon-- neither "iridule" (a mother-of-pearl cloudlet
in Pale Fire), nor "racemosa" (a kind of  bird  cherry),
nor  several  prosodie  terms such as "scud" and "tilt" (see my
Commentary to Eugene Onegin).

><snip><

Michael


On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, David Morris wrote:

>
> ---Charles:
> >
> > Iridule - curiously this word makes neither the OED, nor Websters.........."
> a rainbow reflected in a cloud from a thunderstorm in a distant valley "
>
> This definition is from the words in the poem?  I guess it's a made-up word
> combining "irridescent" with the diminutive "ule."  I think the poem suggests
> it is in a droplet of water.
>