Thursday, November 12, 2009

Nacre


I'm reading the Bolt from the Blue article, and Mary McCarthy points out that the anagram of Cedarn is nacred. I noticed nacre in Lolita (simply because I had to look it up in the dictionary,) and now here it is hidden in Pale Fire. It is also explicitly in Pale Fire (the poem, I believe.)

Yes, Nabokov writes:

I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,
And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range. (line 634ish)

---------
Nacreous gleams. mother of pearl. irridule. irridescent.
GHOSTS.

Supposedly, Poe is also the Tahitian word for pearl, so I googled "Edgar Allen Poe Nacre" and I actually found Brittini's blog site from American Literature in 2005. Funny!

No comments:

Post a Comment