Stan Kelly-Bootle: "Nick
Antosca’s first quotation from Lolita includes that mood-killing technical word,
NATES, which, unsurprisingly, 12-year-old Nick has to look up. Alas, NATES still
rhymes with GRATES in my affronted Anglophonic soul...If the use of NATES is to
suggest a surgical lexicon/mindset for Humbert, why does VN use the everyday
English SHOULDER-BLADES in the same passage, rather than the matching
cold-medical OMOPLATES."
JM: The equivalent
term to the English "nates," in Portuguese, is "nádegas" (vulgar latin
"natica," from "nates, -ium").
It's equally medically-sounding here, but
it leads no one to a dictionary, for it is routinely applied to baby's bums
(diapers and creams in common advertising), or to indicate where an
injection is to be applied.. The most
usual term in "bunda" (abbreviated as "bum bum"), inspired by Angolan
slaves (Bantu ethnic group of the "Ovimbundos"), brought to Brazilian
shores more than three hundred years ago. They display "esteatopygia"
(a fat ass), considered to be as beautiful as the Greek "kalipygean" ones
("pygos" are the nates in Greek).
btw: please excuse me for
sporadic incorrect spellings of foreign mechanically transposed words.
I wonder wherefrom did "bum" in English
find its inspiration?
Artistically speaking: I just found
several instances in which the equivalent word for "nates" has been
erotically employed (in the Portuguese translation).
I'm almost sure that Nabokov was familiar with
these verses by Rimbaud and Verlaine (" Les Stupra").
I copied some parts from them, from the
internet*.
Frankly, "buttocks", "hindpart","behind",
perhaps even "rump" are not nearly as erotically sonorous, as
in Nabokov's choice "nates"...
.............................................
* An excerpt
from "Buttocks" [As translated by
Oliver Bernard: Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)]
"...for women, it is only in the charming
parting
That the long tufted silk flowers.
A touching and marvellous
ingenuity
Such as you see only in angels in holy pictures
Imitates the
cheek where the smile makes a hollow.
Oh! For us to be naked like that,
seeking joy and repose,
Facing one's companion's glorious part,
Both of us
free to murmur and sob?"
..."pour elles, c'est seulement dans la raie
Charmante que fleurit le
long satin touffu.
Une ingéniosité touchante et merveilleuse
Comme l'on ne
voit qu'aux anges des saints tableaux
Imite la joue où le sourire se
creuse.
Oh ! de même être nus, chercher joie et repos,
Le front tourné
vers sa portion glorieuse,
Et libres tous les deux murmurer des sanglots
?"
A more cruel
and daring one, from which the excerpts are only in its French
original, "Le Sonnet du Trou du Cul," par Arthur Rimbaud et Paul Verlaine
( en forme de parodie d'un volume d'Albert Mérat, intitulé l'Idole, où sont
détaillées toutes les beautés d'une dame : Sonnet du front, Sonnet des yeux,
Sonnet des fesses, sonnet du..., dernier sonnet...)
"Obscur et froncé comme
un oeillet violet
Il respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousse
Humide encor
d'amour qui suit la pente douce
Des fesses blanches jusqu'au bord de son
ourlet."
NB: In Portuguese, the word "nádegas" is used for the French
"fesses"
Franzida e
obscura como um ilhós violeta,
Ela respira, humilde, entre a
relva rociada
Inda do amor que desce a branda rampa
das
Alvas nádegas até o coração da
greta.
Cf.
Arthur Rimbaud. Les Stupra. (on donne ce titre éloquent à trois sonnets
attribués à Rimbaud, publiés pour la première fois ensemble en 1923.)
www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Stupra.html -
Arthur Rimbaud - The
ancient beasts bred even on the run... ...www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Beasts.html -
www.starnews2001.com.br/rimbaud.html