S.K-B: Jansy asks how
the axiom works for “non-verbal” or “symbolic/pictorial” language. To which I
say: SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION IN NON-VERBAL, SYMBOLIC/PICTORIAL FORMAT! Gotchyer?
JM: There's no
explanation for why my original question on signifiers, metaphor and
NL doesn't concinnate with your translation: "how the axiom works
for 'non-verbal' or 'symbolico/pictorial' language.".
I'll try a different method, obtained in Agatha
Christie's gestual "Strange Jest.". There are words in it, though :)
...
A young couple describes to Miss
Marple their uncle Harry's last words, "You'll be all right[...] And
then he tapped his eye - his right eye - and winked at us. And then - he
died.". He left them a bundle of love letters signed Betty Martin
and a recipe of garnished gammon and spinach. Only Miss Marple
can unravel the secret: the recipe was inspired in Dickens: gammon and
spinach = nonsense. The jest: "All my eye and Betty Martin"
indicates "this is not a true picture." Actually their inheritance had
been glued on the envelope: a valuable stamp...
( I suppose my
answer lies in "a valuable stamp")
Well...why,
Stan, I could try to explore the untranslatability-effect of mere iteration,
reiteration and repetitious repetition.Nabokov admired Robbbe-Grillet's splendid
repetitions and details... Perhaps we could compare one of R-G "Three
Reflected Visions" (Snapshots), but focusing on his coffepot, and
VN's blue punch-bowl in Pnin?
Unfortunately the texts will be totally deformed
by excerptings*, repetition is lost and only a check in the originals shall
be revelatory enough. Let's give it
a try, though.
A.R-G: "The coffeepot is on the
table[...] The coffeepot is made of brown earthenware. It consists of a sphere
topped by a cylindrical filter holder with a mushroom-shaped lid. The spout is
an S with flattened curves, widening out slightly at the base. The handle has,
perhaps, the shape of an ear**, or rather, the outerfold of an ear; but it would
be a misshapen ear, too circular and lacking a lobe, which would thus resemble a
"pitcher handle". The spout, the handle, and the mushroom lid are of a creamy
color. The rest is of a very light, smooth brown, and shiny. There is
nothing on the table except the waxy tablecloth, the ceramic base, and the
coffeepot[...]The spherical surface of the coffeepot is a shiny, distorted
reflection of the window, a sort of four-sided figure whose sides form the arcs
of a circle. The line of the wooden uprights between the two window sections
widem abruptly at the bottom into a vague spot. This is, no doubt, the shadow of
the dressmaker's dummy." In a second section, he adds: "A good smell of hot
coffee arises from the pot on the table."
V.Nabokov: ...a large bowl of
brilliant aquamarine glass with a decorative design of swirled ribbing and lily
pads. 'My, what a lovely thing!' cried Betty. Pnin eyed the bowl
with pleased surprise as if seeing it for the first time. It was, he said, a
present from Victor. [...] By some tender coincidence the bowl had come on the
very day Pnin had counted the chairs and started to plan this party. It had come
enclosed in a box within another box inside a third one, and wrapped up in an
extravagant mass of excelsior and paper that had spread all over the kitchen
like a carnival storm. The bowl that emerged was one of those gifts whose first
impact produces in the recipient's mind a coloured image, a blazoned blur,
reflecting with such emblematic force the sweet nature of the donor that the
tangible attributes of the thing are dissolved, as it were, in this pure inner
blaze, but suddenly and forever leap into brilliant being when praised by an
outsider to whom the true glory of the object is unknown [...] 'Gracious,
Timofey, where on earth did you get that perfectly divine bowl!' exclaimed
Joan[...]Look at it! Look at this writhing pattern[...] Margaret Thayer admired
it in her turn, and said that when she was a child, she imagined Cinderella's
glass shoes to be exactly of that greenish blue tint; whereupon Professor Pain
remarked that, primo, he would like everybody to say if contents were as good as
container, and, secundo, that Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of
Russian squirrel fur [...].He prepared a bubble bath in the sink for the
crockery, glass, and silverware, and with infinite care lowered the aquamarine
bowl into the tepid foam. Its resonant flint glass emitted a sound full of
muffled mellowness as it settled down to soak.[...] He groped under the bubbles,
around the goblets, and under the melodious bowl, for any piece of forgotten
silver — and retrieved a nutcracker. Fastidious Pnin rinsed it, and was wiping
it, when the leggy thing somehow slipped out of the towel and fell like a man
from a roof.[...]Pnin hurled the towel into a corner and, turning away stood for
a moment staring at the blackness beyond the threshold of the open back door. A
quiet, lacy-winged little green insect circled in the glare of a strong naked
lamp above Pnin's glossy bald head. He looked very old, with his toothless mouth
half open and a film of tears dimming his blank, unblinking eyes
[...]
*- I'm applying the method, in a
re-translation into English, that was outlined in Professor Dr
Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld's "Portuguese Irregular Verbs."
** - Has anyone
compared Sterne's "Essay on Noses" with VN's discourse on the same
appendages in his biography of
Gogol?