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Fw: Turkish Delight, PS
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PS: One of PF Brazilian translators (Jorio Dauster) tells me that also the French translation he checked used "les délices du Turc" ( for Shade's lines).
As translated, so distant from the CS Lewis' Queen seduction using "Turkish delight", I felt a discomfort similar to the what I felt watching a cinematic rendering of Turkish prisons (Alan Parker in "Midnight Express") or in certain landscapes described by Lawrence Durrell. Fictional or real, there is no delight in them, except by anamorphing everything (now using anamorphism, not anamorphosis...).
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: Jorio Dauster
To: jansymello
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 8:26 AM
Subject: RE: Turkish Delight
Jansy,
Confesso que, quando traduzimos o Fogo pálido, eu e o Sergio nem nos demos conta de que VN pudesse estar fazendo um jogo de palavras com o doce ao mencionar as "Turkish delights" no poema! Só mesmo você para ir buscar lá no fundo uma pérola dessas. Curioso, fui olhar e o francês também tascou "les délices duTurc", pois que, assim como o espanhol que conheço, ambos ficaram na tradução literal dos versos, sem nada ousar. Mas é ali que VN faz soar os primeiros acordes do tema espiritualista que realmente trespassa todo o poema e que ocupa praticamente a maior parte dos cantos 2 e 3.
Me mande se houver seqüência a essa história do doce.
Abraço,
Jorio
-----Original Message-----
From: jansymello [mailto:jansy@aetern.us]
Sent: sábado, 14 de outubro de 2006 23:43
To: Jorio Dauster
Subject: Turkish Delight
Comecei questionando uma tradução para o espanhol e, de repente, pensei em consultar a sua para "Fogo Pálido".
Eis o ponto de partida, advindo do "Invitation to a Beheading":
A sentence, at random, called my attention ( page 147): "Rodrig Ivanovich ...would jerk his flabby cheeks and his chin, powdered like a Turkish delight, as if freeing them from some viscous and absorbing element".
VN often writes about this kind of Turkish delicacy ( who doesn't remember C.S.Lewis' Queen, offering Turkish Delight in "The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe"?) and I found one sample in "Ada":
"In later years he had never been able to reread Proust (as he had never been able to enjoy again the perfumed gum of Turkish paste) without a roll-wave of surfeit ...yet his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name 'Guermantes,' with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind..."
(Ada's hand adds a comment at this point, interrogating the choice of "hue" and inviting Van to rephrase it.)
What impelled me to write about "Turkish delight" is a question mainly directed to VN translators.
In one of the Spanish translations of Shade's "Pale Fire" they speak of "Las delicias del Turco" ( a literal rendering of Shade's words) and I wondered if the reader would grasp a reference to this sweet in the poem. Then it occurred to me that Shade might not have referred to it, but to something quite distinct ( but the name Proust, suggesting a "Turkish-madeleine", appears rather close to it, so I'm inclined to believe the reference is to the lavender-hued paste...)
The Brazilian translation is even more distanced from the pasty delicacy.The words chosen by Jorio Dauster and Sergio Duarte were " Paraíso do Islã" ( a moslem paradise) and actually they fit in well with the word they chose for "hereafter", i.e: "além" ( the "beyond" where it clearly already suggests paradise )
Lines 221-224: "So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,..."
Should I believe that Shade expects to come across Turk's delights in Paradise? ( but certainly not the same as the ones offered by C.S.Lewis' evil Queen, or some "domestic ghost"...) Or the term has no relation to the sweet?
Jansy
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As translated, so distant from the CS Lewis' Queen seduction using "Turkish delight", I felt a discomfort similar to the what I felt watching a cinematic rendering of Turkish prisons (Alan Parker in "Midnight Express") or in certain landscapes described by Lawrence Durrell. Fictional or real, there is no delight in them, except by anamorphing everything (now using anamorphism, not anamorphosis...).
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: Jorio Dauster
To: jansymello
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 8:26 AM
Subject: RE: Turkish Delight
Jansy,
Confesso que, quando traduzimos o Fogo pálido, eu e o Sergio nem nos demos conta de que VN pudesse estar fazendo um jogo de palavras com o doce ao mencionar as "Turkish delights" no poema! Só mesmo você para ir buscar lá no fundo uma pérola dessas. Curioso, fui olhar e o francês também tascou "les délices duTurc", pois que, assim como o espanhol que conheço, ambos ficaram na tradução literal dos versos, sem nada ousar. Mas é ali que VN faz soar os primeiros acordes do tema espiritualista que realmente trespassa todo o poema e que ocupa praticamente a maior parte dos cantos 2 e 3.
Me mande se houver seqüência a essa história do doce.
Abraço,
Jorio
-----Original Message-----
From: jansymello [mailto:jansy@aetern.us]
Sent: sábado, 14 de outubro de 2006 23:43
To: Jorio Dauster
Subject: Turkish Delight
Comecei questionando uma tradução para o espanhol e, de repente, pensei em consultar a sua para "Fogo Pálido".
Eis o ponto de partida, advindo do "Invitation to a Beheading":
A sentence, at random, called my attention ( page 147): "Rodrig Ivanovich ...would jerk his flabby cheeks and his chin, powdered like a Turkish delight, as if freeing them from some viscous and absorbing element".
VN often writes about this kind of Turkish delicacy ( who doesn't remember C.S.Lewis' Queen, offering Turkish Delight in "The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe"?) and I found one sample in "Ada":
"In later years he had never been able to reread Proust (as he had never been able to enjoy again the perfumed gum of Turkish paste) without a roll-wave of surfeit ...yet his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name 'Guermantes,' with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind..."
(Ada's hand adds a comment at this point, interrogating the choice of "hue" and inviting Van to rephrase it.)
What impelled me to write about "Turkish delight" is a question mainly directed to VN translators.
In one of the Spanish translations of Shade's "Pale Fire" they speak of "Las delicias del Turco" ( a literal rendering of Shade's words) and I wondered if the reader would grasp a reference to this sweet in the poem. Then it occurred to me that Shade might not have referred to it, but to something quite distinct ( but the name Proust, suggesting a "Turkish-madeleine", appears rather close to it, so I'm inclined to believe the reference is to the lavender-hued paste...)
The Brazilian translation is even more distanced from the pasty delicacy.The words chosen by Jorio Dauster and Sergio Duarte were " Paraíso do Islã" ( a moslem paradise) and actually they fit in well with the word they chose for "hereafter", i.e: "além" ( the "beyond" where it clearly already suggests paradise )
Lines 221-224: "So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,..."
Should I believe that Shade expects to come across Turk's delights in Paradise? ( but certainly not the same as the ones offered by C.S.Lewis' evil Queen, or some "domestic ghost"...) Or the term has no relation to the sweet?
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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