Dear List,
After listening to Diskau's intepretation of Schubert/Goethe's Erlkönig,
presenting the growing apprehension in the little dying boy's
voice, set in constrast to his father's blindness to invisible
evil influences, I decided to check in "Speak,Memory." for a reminiscence
that carried the same kind of complaint and
parental blindness.
In Chapter 3,3 Nabokov describes how his uncle had sat him on his
lap and caressed him, with the accompaniment of musical sounds
and extravagant words of affection, to his great discomfort. Only a while
later we he released, when his father called his uncle away: "Basile, on
vous attend."
Young Nabokov's experience with uncle and absent father must have been
transformed more than twice in his novels ( in the lap scene, with apple,
barmen and carmen in Lolita; in Ada's "Nymphobottom" character; and in
Kinbote's flight across the Zemblan mountains and Hazel's suicide
followed by the the noise of the wind against the shutters.
Anyway, at first I looked for the reference in a translation I had close
by. Only later did I find it in VN's English text. While leafing
through the book I found something else (as usual).
In Speak, Memory VN writes about a moth he thought he'd been the
first to identify, only to learn that it "had been described
long ago as Plusia excelsa by Kretschmar." He added: "Many years later, by a pretty fluke ( I know I should not point
out these plums to people), I got even with the first discoverer of my
moth by giving his own name to a blind man in a novel."
The curious thing is that the translator ( Sergio Flaksman,1994)
unwittingly offered his own appraisal of Nabokov's attitude by mis-translating
the word "plum" ( which, in other VN texts I thought
indicated a filling in a cake, a reward...)
He wrote: "muitos anos depois, porém, num impulso ( e sei que năo deveria
apontar essas fraquezas aos outros), vinguei-me do primeiro
descobridor..."
In the parenthetical remark Flaksman stated, literally: "and I know
that I should not point out these weaknesses to others."