Subject
[NABOKOV-L] Hazel's moving lights and its prophetic words?
Date
Body
"Pale Fire", CK's notes on "Old barn":
"...The jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect came out in her dutiful notes as a short line of simple letter-groups. I transcribe:
pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told
In her Remarks, the recorder states she had to recite the alphabet, or at least begin to recite it (there is a merciful preponderance of a's) eighty times, but of these, seventeen yielded no results. Divisions based on such variable intervals cannot be but rather arbitrary; some of the balderdash may be recombined into other lexical units making no better sense (e.g., "war," "talant," "her," "arrant," etc.). The barn ghost seems to have expressed himself with the empasted difficulty of apoplexy or of a half-awakening from a half-dream slashed by a sword of light on the ceiling, a military disaster with cosmic consequences that cannot be phrased distinctly by the thick unwilling tongue. And in this case we too might wish to cut short a reader's or bedfellow's questions by sinking back into oblivion's bliss - had not a diabolical force urged us to seek a secret design in the abracadabra."
"Feu Pâle": ...Je transcris:
" perperi perpira perpa alleral gelgal vortvirt pal feur farrant".
Dans ses Remarques, la transcriptrice déclare qu'il lui fallut reciter l'alphabet...(par ex. "aller", "gel", "or", "arrant", etc)
JM: A simple initial comparison (I wish I remembered, also, the article that explained the choice of words for the translation into French, it's in the Nab-L archives but I couldn't locate it).
No Vanessa Atalanta in the French, but there is "father" (père), "don't go" (pas aller), pale fire (pal feur?), perhaps many more.
The predominant meaning indicates there's a warning against father going somewhere while carrying with him "Pale Fire."
I must search more to see if there's any butterfly embedded in the jumble of words. Right now, the insistence on "arrant" (...thief) points to...Kinbote!
Any suggestions?
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"...The jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect came out in her dutiful notes as a short line of simple letter-groups. I transcribe:
pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told
In her Remarks, the recorder states she had to recite the alphabet, or at least begin to recite it (there is a merciful preponderance of a's) eighty times, but of these, seventeen yielded no results. Divisions based on such variable intervals cannot be but rather arbitrary; some of the balderdash may be recombined into other lexical units making no better sense (e.g., "war," "talant," "her," "arrant," etc.). The barn ghost seems to have expressed himself with the empasted difficulty of apoplexy or of a half-awakening from a half-dream slashed by a sword of light on the ceiling, a military disaster with cosmic consequences that cannot be phrased distinctly by the thick unwilling tongue. And in this case we too might wish to cut short a reader's or bedfellow's questions by sinking back into oblivion's bliss - had not a diabolical force urged us to seek a secret design in the abracadabra."
"Feu Pâle": ...Je transcris:
" perperi perpira perpa alleral gelgal vortvirt pal feur farrant".
Dans ses Remarques, la transcriptrice déclare qu'il lui fallut reciter l'alphabet...(par ex. "aller", "gel", "or", "arrant", etc)
JM: A simple initial comparison (I wish I remembered, also, the article that explained the choice of words for the translation into French, it's in the Nab-L archives but I couldn't locate it).
No Vanessa Atalanta in the French, but there is "father" (père), "don't go" (pas aller), pale fire (pal feur?), perhaps many more.
The predominant meaning indicates there's a warning against father going somewhere while carrying with him "Pale Fire."
I must search more to see if there's any butterfly embedded in the jumble of words. Right now, the insistence on "arrant" (...thief) points to...Kinbote!
Any suggestions?
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/