Subject
Turkish Delight in Invitation to a Beheading,
Ada and Pale Fire ( and anamorphosis)
Ada and Pale Fire ( and anamorphosis)
From
Date
Body
After following the hints of Sergei and A.Bouazza I picked up my poor yellowed and brittle Penguin edition, where I found Cincinnatus's mother, Cecilia C. and her story about the "nonnon" on chapter 12,page 115.
(What a strange lady, one who is reminded of the maternity ward after entering her condemned son's cell in the "cradle/tomb" tradition!) Browsing through one of my least favorite novel on transparencies I came to the description of several optical devices: snapshots, a pre-computer-age "photohoroscope" and the "Quercus", alongside the anamorphic "nonnon".
This "no,no" instrument that reached me through C's mother made me hear his name, in Portuguese, in a curious way. For us "yes,yes" becomes "sim,sim"! Just like "Cincinnatus" who now becomes "born to yes,yes" ... ( a coincidence, I'm sure).
Actually anamorphic objects are not always the result of crooked (convex or concave) mirrors and distorted figures. Unfortunately I left my weighty volume on Anamorphism, written by Baltruysatis, at my office ( & I must have his name incorrectly spelled since I was unable to Google him). By the way, Anamorphosis ( VN's nonnon ) should not be confused with Anamorphism ( the process of "evolution of one type of organism from another by a long series of gradual changes")
A sentence, at random, called my attention ( page 147): "Rodrig Ivanovich was sitting in the easy chair...would jerk his flabby cheeks and his chin, powdered like a Turkish delight, as if freeing them from some viscous and absorbing element".
VN often writes about this kind of Turkish delicacy ( who doesn't remember C.S.Lewis' Queen, offering Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe"?) and I found one sample in "Ada":
"In later years he had never been able to reread Proust (as he had never been able to enjoy again the perfumed gum of Turkish paste) without a roll-wave of surfeit ...yet his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name 'Guermantes,' with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind..."
What impelled me to write about "Turkish delight" is a question mainly directed to VN translators.
In one of the Spanish translation of Shade's "Pale Fire" they speak of "Las delicias del Turco" ( a literal rendering of Shade's words) and I wondered if the reader would grasp a reference to this sweet in the poem. Then it occurred to me that Shade might not have referred to it, but to something quite distinct ( but the name Proust, suggesting a "Turkish-madeleine" appears rather close to it, so I'm inclined to believe the reference is to the lavender-hued paste...)
The Brazilian translation is even more distanced from the pasty delicacy.The words chosen by Jorio Dauster and Sergio Duarte were " Paraíso do Islã" ( a moslem paradise!) and actually they fit in well with the word they chose for "hereafter", i.e: "além" ( the "beyond" where it clearly already suggests paradise )
Lines 221-224: "So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,..."
Ada's hand adds a comment at this point, interrogating the choice of "hue" and inviting Van to rephrase it..
Should I believe that Shade expects to come across Turk's delights in Paradise? ( but certainly not the same as the ones offered by C.S.Lewis' evil Queen, or some "domestic ghost"...) Or the term has no relation to the sweet?
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
(What a strange lady, one who is reminded of the maternity ward after entering her condemned son's cell in the "cradle/tomb" tradition!) Browsing through one of my least favorite novel on transparencies I came to the description of several optical devices: snapshots, a pre-computer-age "photohoroscope" and the "Quercus", alongside the anamorphic "nonnon".
This "no,no" instrument that reached me through C's mother made me hear his name, in Portuguese, in a curious way. For us "yes,yes" becomes "sim,sim"! Just like "Cincinnatus" who now becomes "born to yes,yes" ... ( a coincidence, I'm sure).
Actually anamorphic objects are not always the result of crooked (convex or concave) mirrors and distorted figures. Unfortunately I left my weighty volume on Anamorphism, written by Baltruysatis, at my office ( & I must have his name incorrectly spelled since I was unable to Google him). By the way, Anamorphosis ( VN's nonnon ) should not be confused with Anamorphism ( the process of "evolution of one type of organism from another by a long series of gradual changes")
A sentence, at random, called my attention ( page 147): "Rodrig Ivanovich was sitting in the easy chair...would jerk his flabby cheeks and his chin, powdered like a Turkish delight, as if freeing them from some viscous and absorbing element".
VN often writes about this kind of Turkish delicacy ( who doesn't remember C.S.Lewis' Queen, offering Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe"?) and I found one sample in "Ada":
"In later years he had never been able to reread Proust (as he had never been able to enjoy again the perfumed gum of Turkish paste) without a roll-wave of surfeit ...yet his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name 'Guermantes,' with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind..."
What impelled me to write about "Turkish delight" is a question mainly directed to VN translators.
In one of the Spanish translation of Shade's "Pale Fire" they speak of "Las delicias del Turco" ( a literal rendering of Shade's words) and I wondered if the reader would grasp a reference to this sweet in the poem. Then it occurred to me that Shade might not have referred to it, but to something quite distinct ( but the name Proust, suggesting a "Turkish-madeleine" appears rather close to it, so I'm inclined to believe the reference is to the lavender-hued paste...)
The Brazilian translation is even more distanced from the pasty delicacy.The words chosen by Jorio Dauster and Sergio Duarte were " Paraíso do Islã" ( a moslem paradise!) and actually they fit in well with the word they chose for "hereafter", i.e: "além" ( the "beyond" where it clearly already suggests paradise )
Lines 221-224: "So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,..."
Ada's hand adds a comment at this point, interrogating the choice of "hue" and inviting Van to rephrase it..
Should I believe that Shade expects to come across Turk's delights in Paradise? ( but certainly not the same as the ones offered by C.S.Lewis' evil Queen, or some "domestic ghost"...) Or the term has no relation to the sweet?
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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