Stan Kelly-Bootle:"..does
Dauster’s translation reflect the impact on Anglophone ears of “and her lovely
young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn”? HH’s devotion seems genuinely
human...Yet there’s that forced alliteration, sign of an academic poet manqué?
(Where have we met one those elsewhere?!)...the coy euphemism ...reveals
HH’s devious mind. He calls a nipple a nipple but goes all clinically
abstract...this is VN the novelist brilliantly planting ambiguous clues
[...] VN’s use of omoplates in TOoL...It’s just inexplicably FUNNY. Like
the Beatles singing I Wanna Hold Your Metacampus."
JM: Omoplate or escapula,
delta.... how do they sound in Portuguese? Fairly common like manual,sanguine, dental, cordial,
palpebral*
The excised sentence about "velvety delicate delta" reads
voluptuously musical but quite "normal": "... mesmo que teus mamilos inchem e se rachem, mesmo que se macule e
rasgue teu jovem e adorável delta, tão delicadamente aveludado...
" It's the sentence itself, its literary correctness and
structure, that which creates a kind of distancing effect.
On
second thoughts, what other words could Humbert Humbert have
delicately employed in lieu of the "delta"?
Attention: I must offer you
all my sincere apologies for I've perpretated a most vexing
mistake in the posting on Shade's lines (after I compared them with a
Shakespearean muse.) A puckishly thematic design must have led me
astray.
Carolyn Kunin's careful proddings (off
list)** led me to answer (off-hand):"the quotes must have
come from the Prologue of WS's 'Midsummer Night's Dream'..."
After a mildly frantic search, I wrote back
again: "No... there's no prologue in this edition,.nor in the other!
It seems that there is no prologue, at all." Various exchanges
later, flowerlets and fairies highlighted along Titania's and Oberon's
blessings: "O sing, as none
before thee ever sung,/As never mortal after thee shall sing ! [...] Let
thy renown survive [...]And envy, say, " Would I had Shakespeare
been !", I
finally discovered that, when I tried to get a digital
transcription for quicker use, I had landed elsewhere.
I made the mistake of not checking back my
source and I was not quoting Shakespeare at all.
Carolyn Kunin's acumen helped me to discover
that I'd been copying from a recondite translation of Ludwig
Tieck's poem by Mary C. Rumsey (a digital reproduction from a book that
belongs to the Library of the University of Illinois), published in
London by C. Whittingham, in 1854. The original
appeared in a posthumous edition of Ludwig Tieck's "Die
Sommernacht." (1789) ***
..............................................................................................................
*- VN often uses "palpebral/ palpebrae"to my great
delight. Rilke's poem (epitaph) mentions a rose "slumbering
beneath several eye-lids" and I think it might have
been more harmonious had "palpebrae" been employed in the
translations I read. Perhaps these words felt funny to their
Northern ears, a Nabokov daring musicality was required?
**- CK: - "Does
Shakespeare have a muse and versipel in the Dream? I haven't been following the
discussion, but at least I do know the play fairly well ...";
"- 'Sing as none has done before'? Interesting. Where is it in the play?";
- "Which act? which scene?"
CK closed the discussion good-humoredly with:"Now what was the name of
that Zemblan translator of Shakespeare?".
*** - "Edward Bulow being with his honoured old friend Tieck during
the winter of 1847, their conversation often led to remembrances of the Poet's
youth...for the man of letters, even the least successful and defective attempts
of a great genius that he has studied, loved, and honoured, must always be
interesting as marking the youthful developement of his powers...Tieck
occasionally read to them some of these early effusions. They afforded especial
evidence of the two poetical elements by which the poet in later times had first
obtained the favour and love of the public, by that intense and inexhaustible
love of nature, evinced in his " Phantasus," and the deep overpowering pathos
displayed in his " Lowell." They undoubtedly manifested in him even then the
same courageous derision of the follies of the time which is handled in so
masterly a manner in his " Gestiefelte Kater/' and repeated in his " Zerbino ; "
but the governing tone of his first poems remains always what we have named. Of
all these youthful poems, one appeared to Bulow the most remarkable, which Tieck
had written in 1789, when he was only sixteen years old, entitled, " Die
Sommernacht." This, even at the first reading, fixed Bulow's earnest
attention...For a long time Bulow pressed Tieck in vain to let the "
Sommernacht" be printed, but he was not able to overcome his dread of the
interpretation which ill-natured criticism might put upon his compliance. At
last, on Bulow's perseverance, Tieck gave him to understand that if he published
it on his own responsibility he would not object. Bulow gladly availed himself
of this reluctant permission, and gave this little gem to the world in the "
Rheinisches Taschenbuch" for 1851. It is certainly a wonderful production
considering the age at which it was written, and would not, I think, have been
deemed unworthy of him at any time...Like Bulow, I have obtained a reluctant
consent from the fair friend to whom we are indebted for the
following
spirited version, to print it. I trust it is not saying too much to pronounce it
worthy of the original ; and I cannot but regret that Tieck did not
live to
see it. It would have gratified him living, — and I have therefore
inscribed it to his memory. Mickleham, December 10,
1853."