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THOUGHTS: SKB re: SIGHTING IN a TRANSLATOR'S BLOG: my Lolita
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Stan Kelly-Bootle:"..does Dauster's translation reflect the impact on Anglophone ears of "and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn"? HH's devotion seems genuinely human...Yet there's that forced alliteration, sign of an academic poet manqué? (Where have we met one those elsewhere?!)...the coy euphemism ...reveals HH's devious mind. He calls a nipple a nipple but goes all clinically abstract...this is VN the novelist brilliantly planting ambiguous clues [...] VN's use of omoplates in TOoL...It's just inexplicably FUNNY. Like the Beatles singing I Wanna Hold Your Metacampus."
JM: Omoplate or escapula, delta.... how do they sound in Portuguese? Fairly common like manual,sanguine, dental, cordial, palpebral*
The excised sentence about "velvety delicate delta" reads voluptuously musical but quite "normal": "... mesmo que teus mamilos inchem e se rachem, mesmo que se macule e rasgue teu jovem e adorável delta, tão delicadamente aveludado... " It's the sentence itself, its literary correctness and structure, that which creates a kind of distancing effect.
On second thoughts, what other words could Humbert Humbert have delicately employed in lieu of the "delta"?
Attention: I must offer you all my sincere apologies for I've perpretated a most vexing mistake in the posting on Shade's lines (after I compared them with a Shakespearean muse.) A puckishly thematic design must have led me astray.
Carolyn Kunin's careful proddings (off list)** led me to answer (off-hand):"the quotes must have come from the Prologue of WS's 'Midsummer Night's Dream'..."
After a mildly frantic search, I wrote back again: "No... there's no prologue in this edition,.nor in the other! It seems that there is no prologue, at all." Various exchanges later, flowerlets and fairies highlighted along Titania's and Oberon's blessings: "O sing, as none before thee ever sung,/As never mortal after thee shall sing ! [...] Let thy renown survive [...]And envy, say, " Would I had Shakespeare been !", I finally discovered that, when I tried to get a digital transcription for quicker use, I had landed elsewhere.
I made the mistake of not checking back my source and I was not quoting Shakespeare at all.
Carolyn Kunin's acumen helped me to discover that I'd been copying from a recondite translation of Ludwig Tieck's poem by Mary C. Rumsey (a digital reproduction from a book that belongs to the Library of the University of Illinois), published in London by C. Whittingham, in 1854. The original appeared in a posthumous edition of Ludwig Tieck's "Die Sommernacht." (1789) ***
..............................................................................................................
*- VN often uses "palpebral/ palpebrae"to my great delight. Rilke's poem (epitaph) mentions a rose "slumbering beneath several eye-lids" and I think it might have been more harmonious had "palpebrae" been employed in the translations I read. Perhaps these words felt funny to their Northern ears, a Nabokov daring musicality was required?
**- CK: - "Does Shakespeare have a muse and versipel in the Dream? I haven't been following the discussion, but at least I do know the play fairly well ...";
"- 'Sing as none has done before'? Interesting. Where is it in the play?"; - "Which act? which scene?"
CK closed the discussion good-humoredly with:"Now what was the name of that Zemblan translator of Shakespeare?".
*** - "Edward Bulow being with his honoured old friend Tieck during the winter of 1847, their conversation often led to remembrances of the Poet's youth...for the man of letters, even the least successful and defective attempts of a great genius that he has studied, loved, and honoured, must always be interesting as marking the youthful developement of his powers...Tieck occasionally read to them some of these early effusions. They afforded especial evidence of the two poetical elements by which the poet in later times had first obtained the favour and love of the public, by that intense and inexhaustible love of nature, evinced in his " Phantasus," and the deep overpowering pathos displayed in his " Lowell." They undoubtedly manifested in him even then the same courageous derision of the follies of the time which is handled in so masterly a manner in his " Gestiefelte Kater/' and repeated in his " Zerbino ; " but the governing tone of his first poems remains always what we have named. Of all these youthful poems, one appeared to Bulow the most remarkable, which Tieck had written in 1789, when he was only sixteen years old, entitled, " Die Sommernacht." This, even at the first reading, fixed Bulow's earnest attention...For a long time Bulow pressed Tieck in vain to let the " Sommernacht" be printed, but he was not able to overcome his dread of the interpretation which ill-natured criticism might put upon his compliance. At last, on Bulow's perseverance, Tieck gave him to understand that if he published it on his own responsibility he would not object. Bulow gladly availed himself of this reluctant permission, and gave this little gem to the world in the " Rheinisches Taschenbuch" for 1851. It is certainly a wonderful production considering the age at which it was written, and would not, I think, have been deemed unworthy of him at any time...Like Bulow, I have obtained a reluctant consent from the fair friend to whom we are indebted for the
following spirited version, to print it. I trust it is not saying too much to pronounce it worthy of the original ; and I cannot but regret that Tieck did not
live to see it. It would have gratified him living, - and I have therefore inscribed it to his memory. Mickleham, December 10, 1853."
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JM: Omoplate or escapula, delta.... how do they sound in Portuguese? Fairly common like manual,sanguine, dental, cordial, palpebral*
The excised sentence about "velvety delicate delta" reads voluptuously musical but quite "normal": "... mesmo que teus mamilos inchem e se rachem, mesmo que se macule e rasgue teu jovem e adorável delta, tão delicadamente aveludado... " It's the sentence itself, its literary correctness and structure, that which creates a kind of distancing effect.
On second thoughts, what other words could Humbert Humbert have delicately employed in lieu of the "delta"?
Attention: I must offer you all my sincere apologies for I've perpretated a most vexing mistake in the posting on Shade's lines (after I compared them with a Shakespearean muse.) A puckishly thematic design must have led me astray.
Carolyn Kunin's careful proddings (off list)** led me to answer (off-hand):"the quotes must have come from the Prologue of WS's 'Midsummer Night's Dream'..."
After a mildly frantic search, I wrote back again: "No... there's no prologue in this edition,.nor in the other! It seems that there is no prologue, at all." Various exchanges later, flowerlets and fairies highlighted along Titania's and Oberon's blessings: "O sing, as none before thee ever sung,/As never mortal after thee shall sing ! [...] Let thy renown survive [...]And envy, say, " Would I had Shakespeare been !", I finally discovered that, when I tried to get a digital transcription for quicker use, I had landed elsewhere.
I made the mistake of not checking back my source and I was not quoting Shakespeare at all.
Carolyn Kunin's acumen helped me to discover that I'd been copying from a recondite translation of Ludwig Tieck's poem by Mary C. Rumsey (a digital reproduction from a book that belongs to the Library of the University of Illinois), published in London by C. Whittingham, in 1854. The original appeared in a posthumous edition of Ludwig Tieck's "Die Sommernacht." (1789) ***
..............................................................................................................
*- VN often uses "palpebral/ palpebrae"to my great delight. Rilke's poem (epitaph) mentions a rose "slumbering beneath several eye-lids" and I think it might have been more harmonious had "palpebrae" been employed in the translations I read. Perhaps these words felt funny to their Northern ears, a Nabokov daring musicality was required?
**- CK: - "Does Shakespeare have a muse and versipel in the Dream? I haven't been following the discussion, but at least I do know the play fairly well ...";
"- 'Sing as none has done before'? Interesting. Where is it in the play?"; - "Which act? which scene?"
CK closed the discussion good-humoredly with:"Now what was the name of that Zemblan translator of Shakespeare?".
*** - "Edward Bulow being with his honoured old friend Tieck during the winter of 1847, their conversation often led to remembrances of the Poet's youth...for the man of letters, even the least successful and defective attempts of a great genius that he has studied, loved, and honoured, must always be interesting as marking the youthful developement of his powers...Tieck occasionally read to them some of these early effusions. They afforded especial evidence of the two poetical elements by which the poet in later times had first obtained the favour and love of the public, by that intense and inexhaustible love of nature, evinced in his " Phantasus," and the deep overpowering pathos displayed in his " Lowell." They undoubtedly manifested in him even then the same courageous derision of the follies of the time which is handled in so masterly a manner in his " Gestiefelte Kater/' and repeated in his " Zerbino ; " but the governing tone of his first poems remains always what we have named. Of all these youthful poems, one appeared to Bulow the most remarkable, which Tieck had written in 1789, when he was only sixteen years old, entitled, " Die Sommernacht." This, even at the first reading, fixed Bulow's earnest attention...For a long time Bulow pressed Tieck in vain to let the " Sommernacht" be printed, but he was not able to overcome his dread of the interpretation which ill-natured criticism might put upon his compliance. At last, on Bulow's perseverance, Tieck gave him to understand that if he published it on his own responsibility he would not object. Bulow gladly availed himself of this reluctant permission, and gave this little gem to the world in the " Rheinisches Taschenbuch" for 1851. It is certainly a wonderful production considering the age at which it was written, and would not, I think, have been deemed unworthy of him at any time...Like Bulow, I have obtained a reluctant consent from the fair friend to whom we are indebted for the
following spirited version, to print it. I trust it is not saying too much to pronounce it worthy of the original ; and I cannot but regret that Tieck did not
live to see it. It would have gratified him living, - and I have therefore inscribed it to his memory. Mickleham, December 10, 1853."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/