Subject
THOUGHTS: Nabokov and Machado
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Jerry Friedman replies to Jansy Mello:
--- On Sat, 12/20/08, jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
...
> J.Friedman: [..] as Nims says in reply to VN, it's a
> change of weasels to minks (is that an example of poshlost?)
> in a poem by Antonio Machado. The weasels' connotations
> may have been wrong, but the minks' are worse.
> JM: I wikied Machado to try to read the word
> "weasel" (altered into "mink") in the original Spanish.
Sorry, Jansy.
Machado:
De entre las peñas salen dos lindas comadrejas;
me miran y se alejan, huyendo, y aparecen
de nuevo ¡tan curiosas!... Los campos se obscurecen.
My literal translation:
From between the rocks emerge two beautiful weasels;
They look at me and move away, fleeing, and appear
Again, so curious!... The fields darken.
Nims:
Suddenly two lissome mink glitter from the rock,
Look at me with jewel eyes, flash away, and come
Back at once--so interested! Darkening fields are dumb.
The /poshliy/ "jewel eyes" reminds me of Kinbote's
description of the wood duck: "...emerald, amethyst,
carnelian..."
>Found that his story bears some traces of
> similarity with Poe's (marrying the very young daughter
> from a landlord): Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco
> de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado (July
> 26, 1875 - February 22, 1939) was a Spanish poet [...]In the
> same year Machado was offered the job of Professor of French
> at the school in Soria. Here he met Leonor Izquierdo,
> daughter of the owners of the boarding house Machado was
> staying in. They were married in 1909: he was 34; Leonor was
> 15.
Compare the possibly sadder story of Ernest Dowson, whose
prepubescent beloved rejected him.
> His more familiar lines: "Caminante no hay camino/sino
> estelas en la mar" translates us back to the Timon
> lines and Henderson's query (there is a translator
> Henderson mentioned by Nims
> http://books.google.com/books?id=SOIxSpnAOzAC&pg=PA16
> ).) ie: "Walker there is no "ready path" (a
> walk)/ only stars in the sea"
You've been led astray by a /falso amigo/.
/Estela/ is "wake" (Portuguese /esteira/); "star" is
/estrella/.
> ....Poets don't offer
> an animal's name keeping in mind its scientific label:
Some do. I feel sure Nabokov and his created poets
didn't use words that meant a species other than the
one they meant. (Though his comic commentator might.)
By the way, Frost seems to be careful about such things;
on the other hand, Robert Bly refers to a Wilson's
warbler as a "wren".
> how can we know that Machado's englished weasel is not a
> ferret or a marten,
I don't know enough about Machado to say, especially
considering it was a rhyming word, but the poem is set
high on a dry mountain, so the habitat is wrong for a mink
or a polecat. It seems it could be a stone marten.
> that it is unrelated to
> "gossiping" or to "weasel-wording"?
"Gossip"? Is that an etymological pun on "comadreja" and
"comadre"? I don't know enough Spanish to answer your
question, but Nims claimed to thoroughly research the poems
he translated, so maybe he knew.
> In a
> poem one must take care with polisemic branchings ( like the
> one with cuckoo/dove)...
Another translation open to criticism, incidentally, as
"mourning cuckoo" might bring up an irrelevant slang
meaning, but "mourning dove" is the name of a North American
bird--are we in "Russian" Estoty?
Jerry Friedman
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--- On Sat, 12/20/08, jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
...
> J.Friedman: [..] as Nims says in reply to VN, it's a
> change of weasels to minks (is that an example of poshlost?)
> in a poem by Antonio Machado. The weasels' connotations
> may have been wrong, but the minks' are worse.
> JM: I wikied Machado to try to read the word
> "weasel" (altered into "mink") in the original Spanish.
Sorry, Jansy.
Machado:
De entre las peñas salen dos lindas comadrejas;
me miran y se alejan, huyendo, y aparecen
de nuevo ¡tan curiosas!... Los campos se obscurecen.
My literal translation:
From between the rocks emerge two beautiful weasels;
They look at me and move away, fleeing, and appear
Again, so curious!... The fields darken.
Nims:
Suddenly two lissome mink glitter from the rock,
Look at me with jewel eyes, flash away, and come
Back at once--so interested! Darkening fields are dumb.
The /poshliy/ "jewel eyes" reminds me of Kinbote's
description of the wood duck: "...emerald, amethyst,
carnelian..."
>Found that his story bears some traces of
> similarity with Poe's (marrying the very young daughter
> from a landlord): Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco
> de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado (July
> 26, 1875 - February 22, 1939) was a Spanish poet [...]In the
> same year Machado was offered the job of Professor of French
> at the school in Soria. Here he met Leonor Izquierdo,
> daughter of the owners of the boarding house Machado was
> staying in. They were married in 1909: he was 34; Leonor was
> 15.
Compare the possibly sadder story of Ernest Dowson, whose
prepubescent beloved rejected him.
> His more familiar lines: "Caminante no hay camino/sino
> estelas en la mar" translates us back to the Timon
> lines and Henderson's query (there is a translator
> Henderson mentioned by Nims
> http://books.google.com/books?id=SOIxSpnAOzAC&pg=PA16
> ).) ie: "Walker there is no "ready path" (a
> walk)/ only stars in the sea"
You've been led astray by a /falso amigo/.
/Estela/ is "wake" (Portuguese /esteira/); "star" is
/estrella/.
> ....Poets don't offer
> an animal's name keeping in mind its scientific label:
Some do. I feel sure Nabokov and his created poets
didn't use words that meant a species other than the
one they meant. (Though his comic commentator might.)
By the way, Frost seems to be careful about such things;
on the other hand, Robert Bly refers to a Wilson's
warbler as a "wren".
> how can we know that Machado's englished weasel is not a
> ferret or a marten,
I don't know enough about Machado to say, especially
considering it was a rhyming word, but the poem is set
high on a dry mountain, so the habitat is wrong for a mink
or a polecat. It seems it could be a stone marten.
> that it is unrelated to
> "gossiping" or to "weasel-wording"?
"Gossip"? Is that an etymological pun on "comadreja" and
"comadre"? I don't know enough Spanish to answer your
question, but Nims claimed to thoroughly research the poems
he translated, so maybe he knew.
> In a
> poem one must take care with polisemic branchings ( like the
> one with cuckoo/dove)...
Another translation open to criticism, incidentally, as
"mourning cuckoo" might bring up an irrelevant slang
meaning, but "mourning dove" is the name of a North American
bird--are we in "Russian" Estoty?
Jerry Friedman
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/