Subject
Malapropisms and Errata in Lolita
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Bruce Stone in Miranda n°3 - Editorial In(ter)ference: Errata and Aporia in Lolita initiates his arguments using the subtitle: "Adducing error." He draws a parallel between Brian Boyd's observation, in Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, ["that the first sentence of Nabokov's 1962 novel contains a joke... The sentence has the effect of a malapropism"] and the opening lines in Lolita. ["it might have been his second time experimenting with the device] Bruce Stones argues that the novel Lolita, "begins in nearly identical fashion...The first sentence of John Ray's Foreword reads: "'Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,' such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates"... But while the sentence contains numerous stylistic peculiarities-the strained syntax, the dubious reference to "two titles" (is there not only one title, with two parts?), the too-precious and antiquated verb "preambulates"-the comical impropriety hinges on the humble pronoun "it", which has an ambiguous referent. Ostensibly, the intended referent is "present note", but this antecedent is the object of a preposition, while the pronoun fills a subject slot in the sentence's concluding clause. This grammatical asymmetry can breed confusion in pronoun reference, particularly when there are multiple potential antecedents available to choose from...Humbert's manuscript (in the sense of "to walk before", if not "to preamble"), and thus, both might reasonably serve as the antecedent. The grammar of the sentence creates the potential for this equivocation in its meaning, which is exactly the problem...Of course, this grammatical inelegance only becomes malapropian in context; in the very next paragraph, Ray assures readers that he has corrected the "obvious solecisms" in Humbert's text, yet under scrutiny, his own first sentence belies the claim....If this error is more than chimerical-a joke planted intentionally by Nabokov-it remains devilishly subtle. However, in Lolita, the initial blunder is only the first in a series of grammatical errors strewn throughout the novel."*
I couldn't but wonder if a comparison between Nabokov's mistakes, as demonstrated by Bruce Stone, were in any way indicative of Lolita's puzzles [ "its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look"] after I isolated Nabokov's sentence in connection to Edmund Wilson's "mistakes and misapprehensions"
The problem with the pronoun "it" as it appears in English was never an issue for me, a non-native quasi-anglophone. After all, in Portuguese, we don't have the "it" or an obligation to announce the subject of a sentence or something in what are the "impersonal verbs" (such as "to rain", snowing, aso). My intuitive correction, if it were indeed a correction, might prove correct in another language. In Maurice Couturier's edition we read in the "Avant-Propos": "Lolita, ou La Confession d'un veuf de race blanche, tel était le double titre sous lequel l'auteur de la présent note reçut les pages étranges auxquelles celle-ci sert de préambule." The problem seems to have been dealt with quite naturally! In the Brazilian edition the solution is even more fluid: " Lolita, ou a Confissão de um Viúvo de Côr Branca - eis os dois títulos sob os quais o autor desta nota recebeu as estranhas páginas que ora prefacia." What shines out in English, because of the use of "it," isn't an error but it maight be, as Bruce Stone claims, a "devilish subtle" joke planted by Nabokov that disappears when the words are translated. There are no "multiple antecedents" at all. There's a self-reference ("auto-reference" is more neutral because it doesn't suggest any human "self" but a doubling on "itself") that doesn't point to John Ray Jr. or to HH's manuscript at all, but to the "Preamble" proper. Perhaps I could formulate it, in a caricatural way, like that: "I preambulate these notes (HH's) in this preamble"
I bet that there is no "it-error" in the Russian prefatory words. If the translation runs as smoothly as it does in French or in Portuguese, we may suppose that Nabokov induced the ambiguity on purpose. But cannot be really certain of it, anyway. If we were, this can only mean that John Ray Jr. wasn't a native English speaker, just like Humbert Humbert.
Once again I remind the List that I've no special talents as a translator to be able to judge any professional's interpretation, or even to disclaim the "it-error." As any amateur reader, I fall in love with certain interpretations and, thanks to Bruce Stone, I had a kick out of JR Jr.'s inadvertent "auto-referential" manoeuver, something that, following Alfred Appel's notes, teems all over Lolita..
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*Bruce STONE, « Editorial In(ter)ference: Errata and Aporia in Lolita », Miranda, n°3 (2010) - Lolita: Examining "the Underside of the Weave" / Lolita : Examiner "l'envers de la toile" (Ed. Marie Bouchet - November 2010), mis en ligne le 26/11/2010. URL : http://www.miranda-ejournal.eu/1/miranda/article.xsp?numero=3&id_article=article_09-579.
Consulté le 03/03/2012.
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I couldn't but wonder if a comparison between Nabokov's mistakes, as demonstrated by Bruce Stone, were in any way indicative of Lolita's puzzles [ "its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look"] after I isolated Nabokov's sentence in connection to Edmund Wilson's "mistakes and misapprehensions"
The problem with the pronoun "it" as it appears in English was never an issue for me, a non-native quasi-anglophone. After all, in Portuguese, we don't have the "it" or an obligation to announce the subject of a sentence or something in what are the "impersonal verbs" (such as "to rain", snowing, aso). My intuitive correction, if it were indeed a correction, might prove correct in another language. In Maurice Couturier's edition we read in the "Avant-Propos": "Lolita, ou La Confession d'un veuf de race blanche, tel était le double titre sous lequel l'auteur de la présent note reçut les pages étranges auxquelles celle-ci sert de préambule." The problem seems to have been dealt with quite naturally! In the Brazilian edition the solution is even more fluid: " Lolita, ou a Confissão de um Viúvo de Côr Branca - eis os dois títulos sob os quais o autor desta nota recebeu as estranhas páginas que ora prefacia." What shines out in English, because of the use of "it," isn't an error but it maight be, as Bruce Stone claims, a "devilish subtle" joke planted by Nabokov that disappears when the words are translated. There are no "multiple antecedents" at all. There's a self-reference ("auto-reference" is more neutral because it doesn't suggest any human "self" but a doubling on "itself") that doesn't point to John Ray Jr. or to HH's manuscript at all, but to the "Preamble" proper. Perhaps I could formulate it, in a caricatural way, like that: "I preambulate these notes (HH's) in this preamble"
I bet that there is no "it-error" in the Russian prefatory words. If the translation runs as smoothly as it does in French or in Portuguese, we may suppose that Nabokov induced the ambiguity on purpose. But cannot be really certain of it, anyway. If we were, this can only mean that John Ray Jr. wasn't a native English speaker, just like Humbert Humbert.
Once again I remind the List that I've no special talents as a translator to be able to judge any professional's interpretation, or even to disclaim the "it-error." As any amateur reader, I fall in love with certain interpretations and, thanks to Bruce Stone, I had a kick out of JR Jr.'s inadvertent "auto-referential" manoeuver, something that, following Alfred Appel's notes, teems all over Lolita..
.
.........................................................................
*Bruce STONE, « Editorial In(ter)ference: Errata and Aporia in Lolita », Miranda, n°3 (2010) - Lolita: Examining "the Underside of the Weave" / Lolita : Examiner "l'envers de la toile" (Ed. Marie Bouchet - November 2010), mis en ligne le 26/11/2010. URL : http://www.miranda-ejournal.eu/1/miranda/article.xsp?numero=3&id_article=article_09-579.
Consulté le 03/03/2012.
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/