Alexey Sklyarenko wrote on
"leggy" in the Russian original of "Perfection" and added "you can see in my English how deeply engrossed in my article I
am" but I hope he will answer one more question.
(btw, in one of VN's short-stories he describes a
profile that opens like a nutcracker - and this suggests he is familiar
with the toothy and vertically-crushing nutcracker, not only with the leggy
thing)
I came across the word "sunbow" in the
short-story "Recruiting" (Nabor). Initially I thought it was a
neologism with the sun replacing the rain. In the translation to Portuguese it
was indeed rendered simply as "rainbow". And yet, it is not a neologism in
English, my Concise Oxford Dictionary describes the "sunbow" as an effect, like
a rainbow, that results from the sun shining on a spray of water.
Quite a surprise to realize that in English these light
effects have special terms to designate them. How is it in Russian? Is it a
neologism in the original?
A sunbow spanning the inward soul of a recruiting
narrator then looking for an imaginary company to share in his bliss...What
a delightful sentence...
I also began to wonder how the name Vladimir could be
translated into other languages, such as we find in "Raymond"or
"Sigmund".Some translations are very peculiar ( William, Guillaume;
Jacques,Jacob, Tiago)
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 6:57
PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] EVENT and a long
lost reference
In this same short-story I found VN used the word "leggy",
which also came up in the list in relation to Pnin's "leggy thing". Here it
comes, on page 335: "During those first warm days
everything seemed beautiful and touching: the leggy little
girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, the old men on the benches,
the green confettti...every time the air stretched its invisible
limbs."
The corresponding phrase in Sovershenstvo, the Russian original of
"Perfection", is golenastye devochki. On the second thought, I might have
translated "leggy thing" in Pnin as golenastyi, or even golenasten'kiy,
predmet. It all depends on the context at which I don't have the time to look
closer. You can see in my English how deeply engrossed in my article I
am.
Alexey
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