Word: landmasses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mars Bars. The caprifoliaceous translations are better clues to Nabokov's whereabouts. As a poet he is a master, divisively, sometimes awkwardly stretched between two landmass languages. There are times when he appears as a provincial linguistic pedant. At other times he is an overrefined rhymester who thinks it snazzy to pretend that "pre-au-roral" is the best English version of a straightforward Russian word meaning "daybreak." Nabokov seems to know and obstinately use all the English words that ever existed, but does he really not see that "stirless" (as in "Stirless, I stand there at the window...