After following the hints of Sergei and
A.Bouazza I picked up my poor yellowed and brittle Penguin
edition, where I found Cincinnatus's mother, Cecilia C. and her story about the
"nonnon" on chapter 12,page 115.
(What a strange lady, one who is
reminded of the maternity ward after entering her condemned
son's cell in the "cradle/tomb" tradition!) Browsing through one of my least favorite
novel on transparencies I came to the description of several
optical devices: snapshots, a pre-computer-age "photohoroscope"
and the "Quercus", alongside the anamorphic "nonnon".
This "no,no" instrument that reached
me through C's mother made me hear his name, in Portuguese, in a curious
way. For us "yes,yes" becomes "sim,sim"! Just like "Cincinnatus" who
now becomes "born to yes,yes" ... ( a coincidence, I'm
sure).
Actually anamorphic objects are not
always the result of crooked (convex or concave) mirrors and distorted figures.
Unfortunately I left my weighty volume on Anamorphism, written by Baltruysatis,
at my office ( & I must have his name incorrectly spelled since
I was unable to Google him). By the way, Anamorphosis ( VN's
nonnon ) should not be confused with Anamorphism ( the process
of "evolution of one type of organism from another by a long series of
gradual changes")
A sentence, at random, called my
attention ( page 147): "Rodrig Ivanovich was sitting in the easy
chair...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 C.S. Lewis' "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..."
What impelled me to write about "Turkish
delight" is a question mainly directed to VN translators.
In one of
the Spanish translation 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,..."
Ada's hand adds a comment at this
point, interrogating the choice of "hue" and inviting Van to rephrase
it..
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