Hello, Beth
What a wonderful collection of swooners in Lolita. Some variations of
their meaning puzzled me, though.
You mentioned that HH
'identifies several denizens of the hotel with the romantic word
“swoon...”.
But when 'the desk clerk, “Mr. Swine,” is transformed by
consonantal rhyme into “pink pig Mr. Swoon” the next morning' the
"romance" seems to have faded away. Do you have any idea why HH distorted this
word from its original romantic sense? Is it possible to surmise that
-already at this point - HH tried to expell from his conscience a
guilty sensation of behaving like a "swine" or be conscious of
his "swooning" moral sense?
The expression "to fall into a swoon" sounds a bit "Victorian" and that's
why I wonder if HH applied this word to his own bliss,ecstasies
and fainting raptures and not just to outsiders, in a kind of
derision?
I was looking for synonims for swooners and howlers because I remembered a
booklet with a collection of these under a title that included
another word ("boner") then applied to silly mistakes found in the
newspapers. I'll quote one I found in the internet, only because
it seems to fit into our theme about errors of "translation":
" If
you are chased by a dog when walking, jogging, or bicycling, stop, turn toward
the dog, point, and firmly say "No!" or "Go home!". Repeat as
needed. This is effective even for dogs that do not speak
English".
Nabokov often described bodily expressions with
some relish. Many gestures, like "pointing and making noises" to a dog do
not require a "translation" - even though they still need to be
correctly interpreted - unlike what happend with poor Gradus who could not
copy the coded sign because he didn't realize Charles II was
left-handed...