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Re: THOUGHTS: SKB re: SIGHTING IN a TRANSLATOR'S BLOG: my Lolita
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Jansy: your informative reply much appreciated. it¹s a well-ploughed
mine-field: English being both enriched and bothered by so many Anglo-Saxon
and Latinate synonyms. For diverse historico-socio-linguistic reasons, the
latter are associated with scientific and religious scholarship, while the
former are rated as less learned or even downright crude. The
posh/polite/evasive versus the native/peasant/candid! (I simplify, of
course. There is also that third Norman-French strand, a minor Celtic
influence, followed by massive global borrowing, all complicating the messy
evolution of modern English(es).)
Key moments are the Lollard¹s struggle for an English Bible that ploughboys
could read without Priestly intermediaries/interpreters (translators really
suffered back then - nowadays we simply malign and underpay them), and, more
relevant to our VN-list, the Lady Chatterley¹s Lover scandal. No velvety,
delicate deltas*, pudenda or vaginas, no tumescent, priapic penises or
phalluses for D H Lawrence¹s randy, honest son-of-the-soiled!
Good authors, too, who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words, writing prose!
Anything Goes! (Cole Porter)
But compare:
The portions of a woman that appeal to man¹s depravity
Are fashioned with considerable care (G&S parody, lists all known synonyms
for delta, ending with the ³ugly² A-S unmentionable. Attributed to Stephen
Potter ?)
That the Anglo-Saxon plainspeak intimate body-part words are indeed shorter
(and often wrongly considered less euphonious) than the alien, unEnglish
imposed Latin ³refinements² (ironically, the ink-horn terms are always the
least horny!) is a mixed blessing for poets and novelists. In spite of
campaigns by feminists such as Germaine Greer, the natural-native
four-letter words for faeces, coitus, vagina and penis still leave a nasty
taste [sic?]. (The BBC TV program Balderdash devoted to obscure etymologies
³shocked the nation² when Greer calmly traced the history of ceynt/cunt,
adding a plea for the taboos to be lifted).
I certainly sympathize with VN¹s (and Cole Porter¹s and the Archbishop of
Canterbury¹s) strong opinions that many authors do offend with relentless
in-your-face ³swearing.² But I think there are other, better, literary
grounds for criticizing Lawrence, Miller, Updike, and, on occasions, Joyce.
En passant, I¹ve never agreed with VN¹s belief that the word ³sex² is
inherently nasty. (Incidentally, the earliest citation for ³sex² meaning
³sexual intercourse² is 1929, the very year I was born. Spookily fatidic?)
* Delta, the DIFFERENCE OPERATOR, is a deliciously magical symbol to us
mathematicians. Delta-x is a DISCRETE non-zero increment/decrement in the
variable x, risking the INDISCREETENESS of being taken to a ZERO LIMIT when
Newton and Leibniz independently invented the Calculus. Much philosophical
confusion about the ratios of VANISHING GHOSTS. And still a central problem
in current physics: mass/energy is quantized but are the two fundamental
> measurables (space, time) discrete (digital) or continuous (analogue)?
HH¹s choice of alternatives to ³delta² (delicate or otherwise!) are NOT the
same as VN¹s choices! The novelist is rightly constrained (within obvious
delta-limits!) by HH¹s specific European multilingual-cultural background,
close but not identical to Nabokov¹s. The narrative-linguistic context is
also delicate: HH is talking and reacting to an American-English audience,
with much humour and even open disdain (especially with Lo¹s hip-girly
slang).
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 08/02/2010 22:13, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Stan Kelly-Bootle:"..does Dauster¹s translation reflect the impact on
> Anglophone ears of ³and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and
> torn²? HH¹s devotion seems genuinely human...Yet there¹s that forced
> alliteration, sign of an academic poet manqué? (Where have we met one those
> elsewhere?!)...the coy euphemism ...reveals HH¹s devious mind. He calls a
> nipple a nipple but goes all clinically abstract...this is VN the novelist
> brilliantly planting ambiguous clues [...] VN¹s use of omoplates in
> TOoL...It¹s just inexplicably FUNNY. Like the Beatles singing I Wanna Hold
> Your Metacampus."
>
> JM: Omoplate or escapula, delta.... how do they sound in Portuguese? Fairly
> common like manual,sanguine, dental, cordial, palpebral*
> The excised sentence about "velvety delicate delta" reads voluptuously
> musical but quite "normal": "... mesmo que teus mamilos inchem e se rachem,
> mesmo que se macule e rasgue teu jovem e adorável delta, tão delicadamente
> aveludado... " It's the sentence itself, its literary correctness and
> structure, that which creates a kind of distancing effect.
> On second thoughts, what other words could Humbert Humbert have delicately
> employed in lieu of the "delta"?
> //coupé
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mine-field: English being both enriched and bothered by so many Anglo-Saxon
and Latinate synonyms. For diverse historico-socio-linguistic reasons, the
latter are associated with scientific and religious scholarship, while the
former are rated as less learned or even downright crude. The
posh/polite/evasive versus the native/peasant/candid! (I simplify, of
course. There is also that third Norman-French strand, a minor Celtic
influence, followed by massive global borrowing, all complicating the messy
evolution of modern English(es).)
Key moments are the Lollard¹s struggle for an English Bible that ploughboys
could read without Priestly intermediaries/interpreters (translators really
suffered back then - nowadays we simply malign and underpay them), and, more
relevant to our VN-list, the Lady Chatterley¹s Lover scandal. No velvety,
delicate deltas*, pudenda or vaginas, no tumescent, priapic penises or
phalluses for D H Lawrence¹s randy, honest son-of-the-soiled!
Good authors, too, who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words, writing prose!
Anything Goes! (Cole Porter)
But compare:
The portions of a woman that appeal to man¹s depravity
Are fashioned with considerable care (G&S parody, lists all known synonyms
for delta, ending with the ³ugly² A-S unmentionable. Attributed to Stephen
Potter ?)
That the Anglo-Saxon plainspeak intimate body-part words are indeed shorter
(and often wrongly considered less euphonious) than the alien, unEnglish
imposed Latin ³refinements² (ironically, the ink-horn terms are always the
least horny!) is a mixed blessing for poets and novelists. In spite of
campaigns by feminists such as Germaine Greer, the natural-native
four-letter words for faeces, coitus, vagina and penis still leave a nasty
taste [sic?]. (The BBC TV program Balderdash devoted to obscure etymologies
³shocked the nation² when Greer calmly traced the history of ceynt/cunt,
adding a plea for the taboos to be lifted).
I certainly sympathize with VN¹s (and Cole Porter¹s and the Archbishop of
Canterbury¹s) strong opinions that many authors do offend with relentless
in-your-face ³swearing.² But I think there are other, better, literary
grounds for criticizing Lawrence, Miller, Updike, and, on occasions, Joyce.
En passant, I¹ve never agreed with VN¹s belief that the word ³sex² is
inherently nasty. (Incidentally, the earliest citation for ³sex² meaning
³sexual intercourse² is 1929, the very year I was born. Spookily fatidic?)
* Delta, the DIFFERENCE OPERATOR, is a deliciously magical symbol to us
mathematicians. Delta-x is a DISCRETE non-zero increment/decrement in the
variable x, risking the INDISCREETENESS of being taken to a ZERO LIMIT when
Newton and Leibniz independently invented the Calculus. Much philosophical
confusion about the ratios of VANISHING GHOSTS. And still a central problem
in current physics: mass/energy is quantized but are the two fundamental
> measurables (space, time) discrete (digital) or continuous (analogue)?
HH¹s choice of alternatives to ³delta² (delicate or otherwise!) are NOT the
same as VN¹s choices! The novelist is rightly constrained (within obvious
delta-limits!) by HH¹s specific European multilingual-cultural background,
close but not identical to Nabokov¹s. The narrative-linguistic context is
also delicate: HH is talking and reacting to an American-English audience,
with much humour and even open disdain (especially with Lo¹s hip-girly
slang).
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 08/02/2010 22:13, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Stan Kelly-Bootle:"..does Dauster¹s translation reflect the impact on
> Anglophone ears of ³and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and
> torn²? HH¹s devotion seems genuinely human...Yet there¹s that forced
> alliteration, sign of an academic poet manqué? (Where have we met one those
> elsewhere?!)...the coy euphemism ...reveals HH¹s devious mind. He calls a
> nipple a nipple but goes all clinically abstract...this is VN the novelist
> brilliantly planting ambiguous clues [...] VN¹s use of omoplates in
> TOoL...It¹s just inexplicably FUNNY. Like the Beatles singing I Wanna Hold
> Your Metacampus."
>
> JM: Omoplate or escapula, delta.... how do they sound in Portuguese? Fairly
> common like manual,sanguine, dental, cordial, palpebral*
> The excised sentence about "velvety delicate delta" reads voluptuously
> musical but quite "normal": "... mesmo que teus mamilos inchem e se rachem,
> mesmo que se macule e rasgue teu jovem e adorável delta, tão delicadamente
> aveludado... " It's the sentence itself, its literary correctness and
> structure, that which creates a kind of distancing effect.
> On second thoughts, what other words could Humbert Humbert have delicately
> employed in lieu of the "delta"?
> //coupé
Search archive with Google:
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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/