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Re: [NABOKOV] Notes on Pale Fire, D.Zimmer
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Dear Jansy,
thanks for benevolently taking notice of my PF commentary. Indeed I tried to be succinct. I simply had to because my appendix as it is occupies more than 200 pages and is almost as long as the novel itself, much too long for an edition meant not for scholars but for the general reading public.
The objective of my note to verse 90 was simply to say who the "next baby" in all likelihood was and not to enter into any discussion about conjectures which readers may or may not share.
As to line 238-46, it is true that in my note I spelt La Fontaine the way he is spelled in the catalogues of the Bibliothèque Francaise while I retained Nabokov's spelling (Lafontaine) in the text. I don't see how any of these spellings would make the fountain "almost disappear". Also I left the connection between "cicadas" and "sea-gulls" entirely up to the reader. The meaning of La Fontaine's poem is clear enough. There were so many immediate connections to make that I lacked the space for conjectures of a more or less hypothetical nature.
And after all, I never intended to deprive my fellow commentators of future work.
Dieter Zimmer, Berlin
----- Original Message -----
From: jansymello
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:24 AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV] Notes on Pale Fire, D.Zimmer
Recent postings stimulated me to return to the German translation of "Fahles Feuer". It is interesting to compare DZ's style and the commentaries I'm more familiar with. DZ's (the few I read) are very succint and matter-of-fact, inspite of the condensed precise information that they convey.
On page 434, verse 90 ("next baby","nächste Baby"), it takes him only nine lines to inform that there was a "Klatschgeschichte" (an idle talk) concerning Shade's hypothetical baby, whose mother (the girl in the black leotard) had died, together with her child, in an accident and to offer his reading ("Tatsächlich besagt der Vers nur"): "Maud Shade, born in 1869, lived in the house with her nephew's parents and witnessed John's birth (1898) and his daughter Hazel's (1934). Maud died in 1950."
Now for Pale Fire's lines 238-46 ( "An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed/ Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,/ A gum-logged ant. / That Englishman [...] je nourris/les pauvres cigales [...] Lafontaine was wrong:[...] Dead is the mandible, alive the song." )
Also Kinbote's commentaries: line 238 ..."semitransparent envelope left on a tree trunk by an adult cicada[...]Lafontaine's La Cigale et la Fourmi (see lines 243-244)...the ant, is about to be embalmed in amber; line 240: "the sea gulls of 1933 are all dead, of course...a bulky monument [...] not yet unshrouded."
In his notes to the poem, DZ (page 437: "La Fontaine irrte") straightforwardly offers the traditional spelling , instead of Shade's and Kinbote's ( "Lafontaine") - from which the reference to a "fountain" almost disappears, before he informs that ants, with their strong mandibles, often eat up cicada-larvae, whereas in PF the cicada-nymph survives whereas the ant is embalmed. The reader is trusted to deduce from this information that "dead is the mandible, alive the song" refers to the victorious cicada, to make the connection bt. "sea gulls" and "cicadas" and, perhaps, even to conjecture about those two different "shrouds" that antecipate the monumental Queen Victoria's, soon to be innaugurated.
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thanks for benevolently taking notice of my PF commentary. Indeed I tried to be succinct. I simply had to because my appendix as it is occupies more than 200 pages and is almost as long as the novel itself, much too long for an edition meant not for scholars but for the general reading public.
The objective of my note to verse 90 was simply to say who the "next baby" in all likelihood was and not to enter into any discussion about conjectures which readers may or may not share.
As to line 238-46, it is true that in my note I spelt La Fontaine the way he is spelled in the catalogues of the Bibliothèque Francaise while I retained Nabokov's spelling (Lafontaine) in the text. I don't see how any of these spellings would make the fountain "almost disappear". Also I left the connection between "cicadas" and "sea-gulls" entirely up to the reader. The meaning of La Fontaine's poem is clear enough. There were so many immediate connections to make that I lacked the space for conjectures of a more or less hypothetical nature.
And after all, I never intended to deprive my fellow commentators of future work.
Dieter Zimmer, Berlin
----- Original Message -----
From: jansymello
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:24 AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV] Notes on Pale Fire, D.Zimmer
Recent postings stimulated me to return to the German translation of "Fahles Feuer". It is interesting to compare DZ's style and the commentaries I'm more familiar with. DZ's (the few I read) are very succint and matter-of-fact, inspite of the condensed precise information that they convey.
On page 434, verse 90 ("next baby","nächste Baby"), it takes him only nine lines to inform that there was a "Klatschgeschichte" (an idle talk) concerning Shade's hypothetical baby, whose mother (the girl in the black leotard) had died, together with her child, in an accident and to offer his reading ("Tatsächlich besagt der Vers nur"): "Maud Shade, born in 1869, lived in the house with her nephew's parents and witnessed John's birth (1898) and his daughter Hazel's (1934). Maud died in 1950."
Now for Pale Fire's lines 238-46 ( "An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed/ Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,/ A gum-logged ant. / That Englishman [...] je nourris/les pauvres cigales [...] Lafontaine was wrong:[...] Dead is the mandible, alive the song." )
Also Kinbote's commentaries: line 238 ..."semitransparent envelope left on a tree trunk by an adult cicada[...]Lafontaine's La Cigale et la Fourmi (see lines 243-244)...the ant, is about to be embalmed in amber; line 240: "the sea gulls of 1933 are all dead, of course...a bulky monument [...] not yet unshrouded."
In his notes to the poem, DZ (page 437: "La Fontaine irrte") straightforwardly offers the traditional spelling , instead of Shade's and Kinbote's ( "Lafontaine") - from which the reference to a "fountain" almost disappears, before he informs that ants, with their strong mandibles, often eat up cicada-larvae, whereas in PF the cicada-nymph survives whereas the ant is embalmed. The reader is trusted to deduce from this information that "dead is the mandible, alive the song" refers to the victorious cicada, to make the connection bt. "sea gulls" and "cicadas" and, perhaps, even to conjecture about those two different "shrouds" that antecipate the monumental Queen Victoria's, soon to be innaugurated.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
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/