Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Padus racemosa
From
Date
Body
>>> Should the English reader synesthetically read "racemosa" and feel it in Russian?
Jansy:
The English reader should (for a full-scale experience):
-- go to Wikipedia, identify Cerasus racemosa (earlier, Padus racemosa) as a Russian 'cheremuha') species, also known in Europe as
bird cherry;
ciliegio selvatico (Ital.);
cerezo aliso, palo de San Gregorio, árbol de la rabia (Span.);
Faulbeerbaum, Faulbeere (Germ.) ;
merisier à grappes, putiet, putier (Fr.).
-- then go to a Botanical Garden of their choice (Kew recommended in the UK; St. Louis<http://www.mobot.org/> in the US), and smell the flowers.
They are amazing.
One cannot feel Russian literature in full (Turgenev especially) without seeing and smelling racemosa.
Picture attached.
(cannot attach the smell but one can buy a perfume).
Maybe soon we will have olfactory files for downloads, extension .olf ?
The plant is also highly medicinal and antiseptic.
The berries are somewhat edible, too, they go into pastries.
This is your full synestethic experience. :)
This refers also to the famous VN's image of a ravine where Communists shot people, a ravine overgrown with racemosa that survived through Communist regime:
Rossiya, zvezdy, noch' rasstrela
i ves' v cheremuhe ovrag.
Some nights, as soon as I'm asleep,
To Russian shores my bed would run;
And now - to the ravine's rip -
Be executed with a gun.
.........
But you, my heart, would go further...
This you with passion would assume:
Still Russia, stars, the night of murder,
The ravine - the bird-cherry bloom.
(Transl. by Boris Leivi)
http://spintongues.msk.ru/nabokov2.html
Victor Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of jansymello
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 9:30 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Padus racemosa
SKB: "Meanwhile, I admit to being thrilled [...] when I find Nabokov extolling "The Russian word [for the Padus racemosa] with its fluffy and dreamy syllables, admirably suits this beautiful tree ..."
JM: On VN's 72 birthday, i.e in April 23/1971, Alden Whitman (The New York Times) mentioned that: "As a writer, Mr. Nabokov travels with a dictionary, and his companion on a recent holiday in the south of Portugal was the 1970 edition of "Webster's Collegiate Dictionary." About it, he has some complaints. Although it includes the word "quassia" as derived from "Quassi," an 18th-century Surinam slave who discovered that the bitter drug made from the shrub was a remedy for fever, "none of my own coinages or reapplication appears in this lexicon-neither 'iridule' (a mother-of-pearl cloudlet in "Pale Fire," nor 'nymphet' (a 'perverse young girl,' according to another edition), nor 'racemosa' (a kind of bird cherry), nor several other prosodic terms such as 'scud' and 'tilt.'"
In the above reference we find VN's reivindication for having coined, or reapplied, the word "racemosa". There's something unclear in it: could VN be comparing the coinage of "nymphet", "iridule" and "racemosa", or should I pay more heed to his "reapplication", mentioned right after "coinages"?
The same happened with SKB's chosen quote, when one doesn't speak Russian to feel how the word for the "Padus racemosa" sounds, smells and shines in Russian:. are we to be thrilled exactly by what, the unimaginable "fluffy and dreamy sillables"?
Should the English reader synesthetically read "racemosa" and feel it in Russian?
.................................................................
A translation into Portuguese of "Mythistorima" and other poems, by Nobel prize-winner Greek poet Giórgios Seféris, unpretentiously employs the word "racemoso" (J.P.Paes) for one of his striking lines. Internet dics inform: adj. racemose, arranged in clusters around a common stem; having stalked flowers along an elongated stem that continue to open in succession from below as the stem continues to grow ; "lilies of the valley are racemose"; the specific name 'racemosa' means 'having racemes'; a raceme being a string-like arrangement of stalked flowers.
Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en%0d%0a>
Contact the Editors<mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"<http://www.nabokovonline.com>
Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies<http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>
Manage subscription options<http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
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/
Jansy:
The English reader should (for a full-scale experience):
-- go to Wikipedia, identify Cerasus racemosa (earlier, Padus racemosa) as a Russian 'cheremuha') species, also known in Europe as
bird cherry;
ciliegio selvatico (Ital.);
cerezo aliso, palo de San Gregorio, árbol de la rabia (Span.);
Faulbeerbaum, Faulbeere (Germ.) ;
merisier à grappes, putiet, putier (Fr.).
-- then go to a Botanical Garden of their choice (Kew recommended in the UK; St. Louis<http://www.mobot.org/> in the US), and smell the flowers.
They are amazing.
One cannot feel Russian literature in full (Turgenev especially) without seeing and smelling racemosa.
Picture attached.
(cannot attach the smell but one can buy a perfume).
Maybe soon we will have olfactory files for downloads, extension .olf ?
The plant is also highly medicinal and antiseptic.
The berries are somewhat edible, too, they go into pastries.
This is your full synestethic experience. :)
This refers also to the famous VN's image of a ravine where Communists shot people, a ravine overgrown with racemosa that survived through Communist regime:
Rossiya, zvezdy, noch' rasstrela
i ves' v cheremuhe ovrag.
Some nights, as soon as I'm asleep,
To Russian shores my bed would run;
And now - to the ravine's rip -
Be executed with a gun.
.........
But you, my heart, would go further...
This you with passion would assume:
Still Russia, stars, the night of murder,
The ravine - the bird-cherry bloom.
(Transl. by Boris Leivi)
http://spintongues.msk.ru/nabokov2.html
Victor Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of jansymello
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 9:30 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Padus racemosa
SKB: "Meanwhile, I admit to being thrilled [...] when I find Nabokov extolling "The Russian word [for the Padus racemosa] with its fluffy and dreamy syllables, admirably suits this beautiful tree ..."
JM: On VN's 72 birthday, i.e in April 23/1971, Alden Whitman (The New York Times) mentioned that: "As a writer, Mr. Nabokov travels with a dictionary, and his companion on a recent holiday in the south of Portugal was the 1970 edition of "Webster's Collegiate Dictionary." About it, he has some complaints. Although it includes the word "quassia" as derived from "Quassi," an 18th-century Surinam slave who discovered that the bitter drug made from the shrub was a remedy for fever, "none of my own coinages or reapplication appears in this lexicon-neither 'iridule' (a mother-of-pearl cloudlet in "Pale Fire," nor 'nymphet' (a 'perverse young girl,' according to another edition), nor 'racemosa' (a kind of bird cherry), nor several other prosodic terms such as 'scud' and 'tilt.'"
In the above reference we find VN's reivindication for having coined, or reapplied, the word "racemosa". There's something unclear in it: could VN be comparing the coinage of "nymphet", "iridule" and "racemosa", or should I pay more heed to his "reapplication", mentioned right after "coinages"?
The same happened with SKB's chosen quote, when one doesn't speak Russian to feel how the word for the "Padus racemosa" sounds, smells and shines in Russian:. are we to be thrilled exactly by what, the unimaginable "fluffy and dreamy sillables"?
Should the English reader synesthetically read "racemosa" and feel it in Russian?
.................................................................
A translation into Portuguese of "Mythistorima" and other poems, by Nobel prize-winner Greek poet Giórgios Seféris, unpretentiously employs the word "racemoso" (J.P.Paes) for one of his striking lines. Internet dics inform: adj. racemose, arranged in clusters around a common stem; having stalked flowers along an elongated stem that continue to open in succession from below as the stem continues to grow ; "lilies of the valley are racemose"; the specific name 'racemosa' means 'having racemes'; a raceme being a string-like arrangement of stalked flowers.
Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en%0d%0a>
Contact the Editors<mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"<http://www.nabokovonline.com>
Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies<http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>
Manage subscription options<http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
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/
