Subject
Re: Fw: parlenda/Der,Das, Die/ changing vertexes
From
Date
Body
In a message dated 01/11/2006 22:37:47 GMT Standard Time, jansy@AETERN.US
writes:
Kinbote retranslated Shakespeare "into English prose from a Zemblan
poetical version of Timon" as:
" the sun is a thief, she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief; he
steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the
moon."
Kinbote curiously maintained the genders for Moon and Sun as they appear in
German ( and in Zemblan?) a masculine Der Mond ( he steals...), a feminine
Die Sonne ( she lures). The sea became "it" (Das!)
The moon is the scholar (masculine, until the modern C20th liberation of
woman) gravely tethered by academic tenure to the earth, and only shining by
light reflected from the female sun, Das Ewig-weibliche, round which the earth,
and Life as we know it, Jim, revolves. We know what light is, but it is
difficult to tell what it is.
Charles
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