Fran Assa: I'm rather surprised now to see
that Brown seems to be claiming that Translated Lolita resembles the Russian
story (which I have never read) moreso than the English one we all know and
love. Am I understanding this correctly?
[EDNOTE. Just for clarification -- Brown was
referring to the "Volshebnik," which Dmitri Nabokov later translated into
English and published as "The Enchanter."]
JM: I
went over Brown's text again and, along the way, I encountered another
interesting testimonial of his: "With my own unfinished,
never-to-be-finished approximation of the language lobe in a Russian brain I
read Humbert's casual hymning of illicit love (bezzakonnaja Ijubov'!) with a
shock never occasioned by his English."
Since, as Brown indicates, we may be
touched, shocked or enchanted, in different ways, by
frequenting distinct cultural and liguistic codes, it might be
interesting to examine language shifts in VN's writings: Humbert Humbert often resorts to French with humoristic
effects when transposed into English. Van
Veen employs Russian, but he also muses quoting from other
languages.
I also wonder how "colors"
(particular letters, their visual-sound images,
their meaning) would come out in translation. For
example, Ada's spectrum is different from Nabokov's own.*
Another comment by
C.Brown ("Humbert Humbert and Charlotte Haze, by a long-standing
tradition of transposition, are Gumbert Gumbert and Shariotta Gejz, though one
can virtually see Nabokov culling all the dark roots of Russian umbrage before
deciding to leave them in possession of their names") led me to Gogol,
and to the occurrence of the double "G" in his name. According to
B.Boyd, Gogol was who "first saw yellow and violet" in
literature, since he "saw much more than the conventional labels"
(Cf. Jean Holabird's "Vladimir Nabokov Alphabet in Color").
Gogol, as also Gumbert Gumbert,
could belong to Nabokov's Russian "black
group", which includes a hard G, like
"vulcanized rubber," and a soft G, placed in the
brown group but retaining a rich "rubbery" tone.
Nevertheless, things are not
so simple.
There is another word,
one that starts with a "G" and is directly related to
rubber, namely, "gutta-percha", which is
differently described.
When Nabokov mentions
it during a discussion about synesthaesia and Rimbaud's "audition
colorée", the "g" is left out when he notes: "If I had some paints handy I would mix
burnt-sienna and sepia for you so as to match the colour of a gutta-percha "ch"
sound..." (The Gift,
(CCC,p.340).
So, inspite of the persistence
of black and rubber in VN's letter "G", "gutta-percha" comes up
for its dropping "ch" sound.
It seems that his particular word was
first heard by young VN from his drawing
master, Mr.Cummings:
"I was captivated by his use of the
special eraser...he...flicked off, with the back of his fingers, the "gutticles
of the percha" (as he said)"
( Speak Memory pg
91).
There is another curious comment by VN concerning Mr.Cummings.
It takes us from 'g' and a rubber-eraser onto chronophobia (not
chromophobia) when, on SM p.93, VN adds: "A quarter of a
century later, I learned... that my humble drawing master, whose age I used to
synchronize with that of granduncles and old faily servants, had married a young
Estonian girl about the time I myself married. When I learned these later
developments, I experienced a queer shock; it was as if life had impinged upon
my creative rights by wriggling on beyond the subjective limits so elegantly and
economically set by childhood memories that I thought I had signed and
sealed." Cp. with SM's opening chapter,
describing "a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when
looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks
before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged - the same
house, the same people - and then realized that he did not exist there at all
and that nobody mourned his absence."
.......................................................................................................
* The typist and the editor
of Van and Ada's manuscript (Violet Knox and Ronald
Oranger) have the first and last letters of their names "form the
beginning and end of Ada's acrostic spelling of the spectrum: vibgyor"
whereas "Nabokov's own word for rainbow, in his private language, is
"KZSPYGV" (quoting Brian Boyd).
** - More on "gutta-percha" is to be found in
the archives (VN-L,
january 2007)
Btw: thanks for your kind words,
Fran!