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[Nabokov-List] QUERY: Russian Translation of "conjurer"
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Dear List and Priscilla Meyer,
An important observation about the word used to render "conjure/conjuror" in Russian was sent by P. Meyer:
...the Russian is fokusnik, (someone who does magic tricks, not a wizard of the folk variety)
I tried to find in VN's "Pale Fire" and "Ada" variations on "conjure" and "conjure up" in the English original. Indeed, contrary to what I'd initially supposed, the meaning "conspirary and treason" was not implied by Kinbote.
Shade, though, might have used "conjuring"to indicate "swearing", "oaths".
There is also a slight hint of an "opposite side", of a "religious conversion" and, even, "versipels" although the latter dont seem to suggest any change of loyalties, switches of national coats and flags nor any other sort of betrayal ...
A critical reference to James Joyce seems to be clear. There is also an allusion to the conjuring wonder of sexual arousal...
Conjure,conjuror: Pale Fire
Kinbote: ...I once watched across the tea table in my uncle's castle a conjurer who had just given a fantastic performance and was now quietly consuming a vanilla ice... his marvelous fluid-looking fingers which could if he chose make his spoon dissolve into a sunbeam ...Shade's poem is, indeed, that sudden flourish of magic: my gray-haired friend, my beloved old conjurer, put a pack of index cards into his hat - and shook out a poem.
John Shade:
lines 610-616
Dying in a motel, with the loud fan.../ And, from the outside, bits of colored light.../He suffocates and conjures in two tongues/ The nebulae dilating in his lungs.
C. Kinbote:
(a) - I yearned for the opposite side...the omens, and the patch of pale light under the lone streetlamp on the road below. By the onset of the season here conjured up, I had surmounted the very special and very private fears that are discussed elsewhere (see note to line 62)
(b) - "Among the lupines and the aspens," said the poet gravely. (Conjuring up the scene.)... and a valerian-flavored burp.
(c) - Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor - one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away"), in wild, misty, almost legendary Zembla! What stunning conjuring tricks our magical mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father time!... His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian
..........................
ADA.
1.Ada would be describing a dream, a natural history wonder, a special belletristic device - Paul Bourget's 'monologue intérieur' borrowed from old Leo - or some ludicrous blunder in the current column of Elsie de Nord...who thought that Lyovin went about Moscow in a nagol'nïy tulup, 'a muzhik's sheepskin coat, bare side out, bloom side in,' as defined in a dictionary our commentator produced like a conjurer...
2. Mr Plunkett had been, in the summer of his adventurous years, one of the greatest shuler's, politely called 'gaming conjurers,' both in England and America...spent several years in prison, had become reconverted to the Roman faith... had dabbled in missionary work, written a handbook on conjuring...
3. He remembered that the last time he had made card magic was when showing some tricks to Demon - who disapproved of their poker slant. Oh, yes, and when putting at ease the mad conjurer at the ward whose pet obsession was that gravity had something to do with the blood circulation of a Supreme Being.
4.Ada did manage, now and then, to conjure up a combinational sacrifice, offering, say, her queen - with a subtle win after two or three moves if the piece were taken; but she saw only one side of the question, preferring to ignore, in the queer lassitude of clogged cogitation, the obvious counter combination that would lead inevitably to her defeat if the grand sacrifice were not accepted.
5.It was only the sort of shop where the jeweler's fingertips have a tender way of enhancing the preciousness of a trinket by something akin to a rubbing of hindwings on the part of a settled lycaenid or to the frottage of a conjurer's thumb dissolving a coin...She's terribly nervous, the poor kid,' remarked Ada ..Oh, what a good sight! Orchids. I've never seen a man make such a speedy recovery.'
6. the temptations, real or conjured up before sleep, were diminishing in frequency. By the age of seventy-five fortnightly intimacies with cooperative Ada, mostly Blitzpartien, sufficed for perfect contentment.
In the "Enchanter", where we find "Arthur's" magic wand there might be new word-plays with "conjurer" but I didn't have time to examine those yet.
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An important observation about the word used to render "conjure/conjuror" in Russian was sent by P. Meyer:
...the Russian is fokusnik, (someone who does magic tricks, not a wizard of the folk variety)
I tried to find in VN's "Pale Fire" and "Ada" variations on "conjure" and "conjure up" in the English original. Indeed, contrary to what I'd initially supposed, the meaning "conspirary and treason" was not implied by Kinbote.
Shade, though, might have used "conjuring"to indicate "swearing", "oaths".
There is also a slight hint of an "opposite side", of a "religious conversion" and, even, "versipels" although the latter dont seem to suggest any change of loyalties, switches of national coats and flags nor any other sort of betrayal ...
A critical reference to James Joyce seems to be clear. There is also an allusion to the conjuring wonder of sexual arousal...
Conjure,conjuror: Pale Fire
Kinbote: ...I once watched across the tea table in my uncle's castle a conjurer who had just given a fantastic performance and was now quietly consuming a vanilla ice... his marvelous fluid-looking fingers which could if he chose make his spoon dissolve into a sunbeam ...Shade's poem is, indeed, that sudden flourish of magic: my gray-haired friend, my beloved old conjurer, put a pack of index cards into his hat - and shook out a poem.
John Shade:
lines 610-616
Dying in a motel, with the loud fan.../ And, from the outside, bits of colored light.../He suffocates and conjures in two tongues/ The nebulae dilating in his lungs.
C. Kinbote:
(a) - I yearned for the opposite side...the omens, and the patch of pale light under the lone streetlamp on the road below. By the onset of the season here conjured up, I had surmounted the very special and very private fears that are discussed elsewhere (see note to line 62)
(b) - "Among the lupines and the aspens," said the poet gravely. (Conjuring up the scene.)... and a valerian-flavored burp.
(c) - Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor - one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away"), in wild, misty, almost legendary Zembla! What stunning conjuring tricks our magical mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father time!... His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian
..........................
ADA.
1.Ada would be describing a dream, a natural history wonder, a special belletristic device - Paul Bourget's 'monologue intérieur' borrowed from old Leo - or some ludicrous blunder in the current column of Elsie de Nord...who thought that Lyovin went about Moscow in a nagol'nïy tulup, 'a muzhik's sheepskin coat, bare side out, bloom side in,' as defined in a dictionary our commentator produced like a conjurer...
2. Mr Plunkett had been, in the summer of his adventurous years, one of the greatest shuler's, politely called 'gaming conjurers,' both in England and America...spent several years in prison, had become reconverted to the Roman faith... had dabbled in missionary work, written a handbook on conjuring...
3. He remembered that the last time he had made card magic was when showing some tricks to Demon - who disapproved of their poker slant. Oh, yes, and when putting at ease the mad conjurer at the ward whose pet obsession was that gravity had something to do with the blood circulation of a Supreme Being.
4.Ada did manage, now and then, to conjure up a combinational sacrifice, offering, say, her queen - with a subtle win after two or three moves if the piece were taken; but she saw only one side of the question, preferring to ignore, in the queer lassitude of clogged cogitation, the obvious counter combination that would lead inevitably to her defeat if the grand sacrifice were not accepted.
5.It was only the sort of shop where the jeweler's fingertips have a tender way of enhancing the preciousness of a trinket by something akin to a rubbing of hindwings on the part of a settled lycaenid or to the frottage of a conjurer's thumb dissolving a coin...She's terribly nervous, the poor kid,' remarked Ada ..Oh, what a good sight! Orchids. I've never seen a man make such a speedy recovery.'
6. the temptations, real or conjured up before sleep, were diminishing in frequency. By the age of seventy-five fortnightly intimacies with cooperative Ada, mostly Blitzpartien, sufficed for perfect contentment.
In the "Enchanter", where we find "Arthur's" magic wand there might be new word-plays with "conjurer" but I didn't have time to examine those yet.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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