Sometimes what's in a good poem is not what's in a good
poem - but its effect on the reader?
Besides the emotional reaction, sometimes there are
certain shots that ellude me in the original, which ricochet
in translation.
Today I returned to D.Zimmer's translation of "Pale
Fire," more specifically, to Kinbote's commentary on verse 920 ["Making the little hairs
all stand on end."]
and where CK states that:"Alfred Housman ... says somewhere (in a
foreword?) exactly the opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs
obstructed his barbering."
I'd been so taken up by all the against-the-grain matters of
bimanism and adroitness that I missed a point that stood out in German:
"Vers 920: sodass die Härchen sämtlich aufrecht
stehn."
Isn't there a reference to Humbert Humbert's "spine-thrill of delight" or "a
super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine,"
or Kinbote's "something of the chill that ran down my
long and supple spine"(Pale Fire), or VN's own voice defense of Lolita
(1950 Canadian Broadcast Corporation interview) statement that "I don't wish to touch hearts or affect minds. What I want to
produce is that little sob in the spine of the reader.", his words in SO
on "merging of the precision of poetry and the
intuition of science" where in "order to bask in
that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so
much with his brain, but with his spine"?
Because we all know that by
spine VN is indicating the “erection of the spinal
hairs”, not necessarily a beard's incipient hairs but, perhaps,
some link bt. the excitement of great art and ... whatever?
btw: I remember having read a reference to
a similar process of "spinal hair erection" in another author, long
before VN, but I forgot to underline it and now I lost it. It might have
even been Charles Darwin (although, in that case, it would not be related to
artistic bliss).