JM: my email was sent before I saw your
Although Nabokov mentions Alfred Tennyson using a "slight of hand" (a marvellous typo found in an excellent article about glory and fame), I suppose he must have been quite familiar with his translation.
I now see that you did recognize that ‘slight’ was a ‘marvellous typo.’ Do we both agree that it’s really VN’s deliberate PUN, rather than a typo that happens to work as a pun?
SKB
------ Forwarded Message
From: "stan@bootle.biz" <stan@bootle.biz>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:40:44 +0100
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Conversation: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKV-L] One of Tennyson's translations and Pale Fire
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKV-L] One of Tennyson's translations and Pale Fire
JM: slight (= tiny/small) spelling correction! It’s SLEIGHT of hand = cunning, skillful dexterity (Middle English sleghth, cunning/skill). Slight and Sleight have no semantic or etymological connection. They just happen to be pronounced the same nowadays, hence the common confusion. Of course, the words may be switched if a PUN is intended. Does the context indicate such a deliberate misspelling?
Re-your earlier query on VN’s ‘I’ll never surrender’:
The verb Surrender can be gloriously INTRANSITIVE to Anglophone ears. Whatever Nabokov is against, he is announcing his eternal opposition. I don’t think his meaning needs any special dissection
The cry NO SURRENDER has a searing resonance for me, brought up amidst Catholic-Green/Protestant-Orange strife. The slogan is embedded in many protest songs. The following is an Orange chorus, but the sentiments are shared (each side willing to call the other ‘tyrants’).
But baffled was the tyrant's wrath,
And vain his hope to bend her.
For still 'mid famine, fire and death
She sang out "No surrender".
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 28/09/2011 03:51, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
PS ro "Tennyson's translations and Pale Fire" Sorry for what I fear is a case of "dangling participles" (the slight of hand was Nabokov's, not Tennyson's) in "Although Nabokov mentions Alfred Tennyson using a 'slight of hand'."
Besides, the following sentence should have been: "With patience and some daring, some of the scattered references to the Slovo, to good or bad translations and to battles that are found in PF may be related to Tennyson."
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