In a blog organized by translators intent
to guarantee their authorial rights against plagiarists, we
find:
07/02/2010: jorio - lolita "A LOLITA
DE NABOKOV, OU O DESEJO COMO OBSESSÃO" http://naogostodeplagio.blogspot.comClose to his essay about obsessive love and desire, Jorio
Dauster includs a paragraph from his excellent translation.
Here is Nabokov's original (excerpt): "Somewhere beyond Bill's shack an afterwork radio had begun
singing of folly and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks [...] and I
looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I
loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for
anywhere else...No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish,
and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be
tainted and torn — even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of
your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my
Lolita."
Here the translated paragraph
(fragments):
Jorio Dauster: “De
trás do barraco de Bill..., e lá estava ela com sua beleza destroçada, as veias
saltadas nas mãos estreitas de adulta, a pele arrepiada nos braços brancos, as
orelhas sem viço, as axilas descuidadas, lá estava ela (minha Lolita!)
irremediavelmente gasta aos dezessete anos... – e fiquei olhando para ela,
sabendo, tão lucidamente como sei que vou morrer um dia, que eu a amava mais do
que tudo o que jamais vi ou imaginei neste mundo, ou que possa esperar em
qualquer outro. Ela era apenas um traço fugaz de perfume, o eco de uma folha
morta, quando comparada à ninfeta sobre a qual eu rolara outrora gemendo de
prazer; um eco à beira de uma ravina acobreada, com uma floresta longínqua sob o
céu lívido, folhas marrons sufocando o riacho, um derradeiro grilo nas ervas
ressequidas... mas, graças a Deus, não era apenas esse eco que eu venerava.
Aquilo que eu costumava acariciar entre as vinhas emaranhadas de meu
coração, mon grand péché radieux, estava reduzido a sua essência: todo
o resto, o vício estéril e egoísta, fora abolido, amaldiçoado....Insisto em que
o mundo saiba o quanto amei minha Lolita, esta Lolita, pálida e poluída,
carregando o filho de outro homem, mas ainda com os mesmos olhos cinzentos, os
mesmos cílios cor de fuligem, os mesmo tons de castanho e amêndoa, a mesma
Carmencita, ainda e sempre minha! ...Não importa, mesmo que teus olhos
fiquem embaciados como os de um peixe míope, mesmo que teus mamilos inchem e se
rachem..mesmo então eu enlouqueceria de ternura à simples vista de teu rosto
amado e lúrido, ao simples som de tua voz rouquenha, minha
Lolita.”
JM: The lines
Jorio selected are some of the most beautiful lines about "undying love" in
Literature.
The nymphet fantasy and its
ecstasies gives way to a living pale and polluted young girl ("What I used to pamper among the
tangled vines of my heart...had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish
vice, all that I canceled and cursed... I insist the world know how much I loved
my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted..."). The abject rape
and viol, whereby a fantasy is transformed into reality, becomes now
a "sterile and selfish vice" (not the
fantasy itself, I surmise). HH adds:..."thank God it was
not that echo alone that I worshipped."
Whenever
Nabokov has Humbert write about "my (his) Lolita," we find that HH is
behaving possessively and blindly*. As already stated by A.Appel Jr. in his
Annotated edition, HH also writes, in a genuinely heart-rending way,
following the manner of the Roman poet Cattulus to his
mistress, "mia Lesbia," "Claudia mia."* When HH
exclaims "Oh, my Lolita" (instead of "that girl overthere...my
Lolita") there are fundamental changes of address and mood. HH's last words
are even more special for now he is addressing Dolores Haze
directly before he adds, "my Lolita".
...........................................................................................
* - "all the boys' eyes on her hair
and neck, my Lolita;"a chance
to be alone with my Lolita for weeks, perhaps — and gorge the limp nymphet with
sleeping pills;"I overtook my prey ...and she was my Lolita
again — in fact, more of my Lolita than ever;" "You will dwell, my Lolita will dwell (come
here, my brown flower) with thirty-nine other dopes in a dirty dormitory"
..."My only grudge against nature was that I
could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young
matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her
comely twin kidneys." "provided I could lock my Lolita up
somewhere..". My Lolita had a way of raising her bent
left
knee."
** The word "forever" referred only to my
own passion, to the eternal Lolita as reflected in my blood.The Lolita whose
iliac crests had not yet flared, the Lolita that today I could touch and smell
and hear and see... — that Lolita, my Lolita, poor Catullus would lose
forever.
There is a gradual
building up of VN's perception of his "nymphet", but it is not
chronologically indicated: ( "she, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my
Lolita, was to eclipse completely her prototype") and "all this gets mixed up with the exquisite
stainless tenderness seeping through the musk and the mud, through the dirt and
the death, oh God, oh God. And what is most singular is that she, this Lolita,
my Lolita, has individualized the writer's ancient lust, so that above and over
everything there is — Lolita." His
regret and shame: "nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul
lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to me — to me as I am
now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefaction"
In this other
example he seems to blend various "my Lolita" indicators:
"Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with." Then: "...my
Lolita remarked:/ "You
know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own";
and it struck me...that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind
...dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely
forbidden to me......oh my poor, bruised child./ I loved you.
I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you....And there were times when I knew
how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita girl, brave
Dolly Schiller." [...]
Everything culminates
here: "I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of
durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only
immortality you and I may share, my
Lolita."