Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010461, Fri, 29 Oct 2004 11:39:58 -0700

Subject
Re: Fwd: ADA: hysteria - hysteritis
Date
Body
Hi, Tomasz

How wonderful to find herbs and flowers on every page in Ada. I was
surprised a week ago when, in TT, I began a desultory search for references
on birds and I found my first one between " a thousand sips and one swallow"
!
It would be interesing to bring togather a verbal Nabokovian Herbarium &
Bestiarium...
I was also interested in the oranges and their peels close to items
suggesting "The Fall" ( "Val and Chute", described by John in the list ) and
remembered that in German the word for orange is Apfelsine ( Apple with a
sounding "sin" ).
Your suggestion that translators should notice semantic or phonetic
similarities can be extended from those similarities that were made explicit
by VN to those that lurk behind several other languages and which may never
be fully proved.
Jansy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 2:07 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: ADA: hysteria - hysteritis


Jansy: I couldn´t find the pun.
Tomasz:

Well, you might be right. I didn't put it clearly, but it's only my
supposition (what Van COULD have in mind).

> Also I don´t understand why the correct translation should
> be "hysteritis", instead of "hysteria".

Oh, may I say that I used a wrong word. It's not a pun, but might be a
pointer. I will stick to my statement, tough, that a translator should
notice every similarity in semantics or phonetics of words used by the
author (espiecially our VN here). I can tell you, for example, I see a
flower or a herb on every other page of Ada. It's ridiculous, isn't it?

> I always understood that without wearing panties and
> riding freely on the branches Ada´s body should carry lots of webs and
> moss.I never thought that she´d be unhealthy, only dirty.

But, if you do it on a regular basis? I'm not a physician, but I suppose
that you may cool off yourself down there - and that could lead to a
serious disease (with all that dirt involved - now, here's a pun). Correct
me, if I'm wrong.

Best,
Tomasz

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