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Fw: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] D.B.J on iconicity,
SKB 1001 and a return to Natasha.
SKB 1001 and a return to Natasha.
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Re: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] D.B.J on iconicity and "Fahles Feuer", Yes and NosesStan Kelly Bootle: "Agreed! Add 'iconicity' to the long list of things that can be 'lost in translation,'... The poor translator (doomed, unrecognized, and underpaid!) faces the extra challenge of deciding which "shapes" (iconic resonances?) are really intended by the author, and which may be happy accidents or simply fanciful constructions by the reader [...] Are you making too much of the 'dangers' in translating the English noun string for 999 into the unavoidably 'denser' German equivalent, neunhundertneunundneunzig? To my Brit ears/eyes, CK's 'nine hundred ninety-nine lines' already provides a mild shock that may be missed by non-Brits[...]
The relevance to Jansy's iconicity theme is that most American readers would simply not notice the missing AND, because this is how Americans usually 'spell out' 999[ ...]What's missing and sorely missed is that elusive 1000th line [...In mathematical modulo terms, however, we still lack the line 0, since 0 and 1000 = 1000(mod 1000) but 1000 = 1(mod 999)] (Recall, in passing, the list's discussion of '1001 Nights' and how English, Persian and Arabic conventions vary allowing the dramatic 'One Thousand Nights and One Night?') [...]Nor is it fair to see a reprehensible fat worm-like shape in neunhundertneunundneunzig. Those brought up with agglutinating languages (and German is relatively mild in this respect) consider such amalgamations as perfectly normal, readable, and, indeed eminently sensible and green (saved-spaces equal conserved-energy equals saved rainforests in Jansy's Brasil!)
JM: Si parva licet I'll start with those sovereign "saved-spaces", in the way they were explained by Ellery Queen's 1958 "The Finishing Stroke". The Queens apparently antecipated the artsy trend of abundant literary references inserted in trivial detective novels. Here they departed with a mixture of Shakespeare and the twelfth zodiac nights, passing on to Australian Henry Handel Richardson's 1929 novel "Ultima Thule" (no Poe, no Longfellows and no Nabokov!) to implicate the proof-reader who, quite unconsciously, spaced the letters he placed in his threatening cards instead of boldly underlining them. There's even a sophisticated tenacious British artist and type-designer implicated in a "finishing stroke", Mr. Eric Gill.Well, then. I grew attached to rampant worms and hidden butterflies. I shall only give them up after shown line 1000 or line 1001 ('cause of mathematical modulo terms?).
Kinbote's American-English didn't agglutinate words nor add the Brit's "and". Nevertheless he chose to write "lines" after the "nines", not "verses" and this seemed quite catterpillary to my overinterpretative taste...
Returning to Nabokov's "Natasha" to add my praise to yours for Dmitri's expert translation: what a find the word "formication"!!!
I forgot to add another sentence related to these "ants". The Baron and Natasha sit at an empty table in a deserted café and "pretend that they were eating and drinking and an orchestra was playing". Natasha's solitary "formication" , when accompanied by the idyllic Baron is hinted by "An ant...We've been sitting on ants."
The narrator endowed the B. Wolfe with an old man's gait and gesture ( "laboriously ascending", "large shaved head", "pale blue head","his shaved head", "light-blue head like a bull", "seating himself by the bed and slapping his knees", "made a popping sound with his lips", "recount an incident from his past","ponderously loped after her", "taciturn and grimaced at the ferocious noise of the automobile horns") and also Natasha behaves very childlishly but ...is she so young? There is a mysterious image of her "walking along the very edge of the water, so that the child-size waves of the lake plashed up to her feet". Child-size waves of a lake?
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The relevance to Jansy's iconicity theme is that most American readers would simply not notice the missing AND, because this is how Americans usually 'spell out' 999[ ...]What's missing and sorely missed is that elusive 1000th line [...In mathematical modulo terms, however, we still lack the line 0, since 0 and 1000 = 1000(mod 1000) but 1000 = 1(mod 999)] (Recall, in passing, the list's discussion of '1001 Nights' and how English, Persian and Arabic conventions vary allowing the dramatic 'One Thousand Nights and One Night?') [...]Nor is it fair to see a reprehensible fat worm-like shape in neunhundertneunundneunzig. Those brought up with agglutinating languages (and German is relatively mild in this respect) consider such amalgamations as perfectly normal, readable, and, indeed eminently sensible and green (saved-spaces equal conserved-energy equals saved rainforests in Jansy's Brasil!)
JM: Si parva licet I'll start with those sovereign "saved-spaces", in the way they were explained by Ellery Queen's 1958 "The Finishing Stroke". The Queens apparently antecipated the artsy trend of abundant literary references inserted in trivial detective novels. Here they departed with a mixture of Shakespeare and the twelfth zodiac nights, passing on to Australian Henry Handel Richardson's 1929 novel "Ultima Thule" (no Poe, no Longfellows and no Nabokov!) to implicate the proof-reader who, quite unconsciously, spaced the letters he placed in his threatening cards instead of boldly underlining them. There's even a sophisticated tenacious British artist and type-designer implicated in a "finishing stroke", Mr. Eric Gill.Well, then. I grew attached to rampant worms and hidden butterflies. I shall only give them up after shown line 1000 or line 1001 ('cause of mathematical modulo terms?).
Kinbote's American-English didn't agglutinate words nor add the Brit's "and". Nevertheless he chose to write "lines" after the "nines", not "verses" and this seemed quite catterpillary to my overinterpretative taste...
Returning to Nabokov's "Natasha" to add my praise to yours for Dmitri's expert translation: what a find the word "formication"!!!
I forgot to add another sentence related to these "ants". The Baron and Natasha sit at an empty table in a deserted café and "pretend that they were eating and drinking and an orchestra was playing". Natasha's solitary "formication" , when accompanied by the idyllic Baron is hinted by "An ant...We've been sitting on ants."
The narrator endowed the B. Wolfe with an old man's gait and gesture ( "laboriously ascending", "large shaved head", "pale blue head","his shaved head", "light-blue head like a bull", "seating himself by the bed and slapping his knees", "made a popping sound with his lips", "recount an incident from his past","ponderously loped after her", "taciturn and grimaced at the ferocious noise of the automobile horns") and also Natasha behaves very childlishly but ...is she so young? There is a mysterious image of her "walking along the very edge of the water, so that the child-size waves of the lake plashed up to her feet". Child-size waves of a lake?
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/