Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] D.B.J on iconicity and "Fahles Feuer",
Yes and Noses
Yes and Noses
From
Date
Body
On 04/06/2008 17:45, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Dear List,
>
> From today's random find in the Archives, with Donald Barton Johnson's
> abstract of "Signs & Symbols":Nabokov & Iconicity [ NABOKOV SYMPOSIUM (July
> 15-19, 2002) Saint Petersburg ], I learned that "Iconicity is.... the use of
> a letter's physical shape to carry meaning: words mean; letters (sometimes)
> illustrate or mimic topic and/or theme [...] We shall see that Nabokov, the
> consummate artist, employs these almost subliminal signs and symbols and
> integrates them into the architecture of his art."
> I decided to use this opportunity to bring up something that has recently
> struck me in relation to "iconicity".
> It concerns how words may dangerously and inevitably change shape by
> translation.
> In the German edition of "Pale Fire",Fahles Feuer, there is a surprising
> visual outcome of CK's very first sentence dealing with Shade's poem of nine
> hundred ninety-nine lines.
> We see: "ein Gedicht von neunhundertneunundneunzig Zeilen".
> What a fat worm of a number and it needs no echo of "nine/lines" to make its
> presence felt.
>
> ( Sandy Klein's posting on "how the lead organization lobbying on behalf of
> special privileges for Mexicans in the U.S.A. manages to get away with calling
> itself ³National Council of La Raza.² ...and Russian Noses ("There you have
> it: Russia is the nasal nation.") was a delightful find. Just for the fun of
> it ( but the initial issue is far from amusing) I'll add a palindrome which
> even serves as a criticism for "raza". I think was authored by Julio Cortazar
> while playing with his own name:
> "Adan y raza; azar y nada".)
> ---
> Jansy: Agreed! Add 'iconicity' to the long list of things that can be 'lost in
> translation,' however hard we try!
>
> It's also clear that "iconicity" can "take shape" and "change shape" by
> authorial choices _within_ his/her original language/idiom. The poor
> translator (doomed, unrecognized, and underpaid!) faces the extra challenge of
> deciding which "shapes" (iconic resonances?) are really intended by the
> author, and which may be happy accidents or simply fanciful constructions by
> the reader. Here, I take 'translator' to be a very special kind of 're-re- ...
> re-reader' fully immersed not only in all the quirks and twists of the source
> and target languages, but deeply in tune with the author's 'bag of tricks.'
>
> E.g., Dmitri's wonderful New Yorker translation of Natasha is surely as close
> to his father's 1924 Russian in mood, rhythm, pathos, location, and dilligent
> 'realism' (ma non tropo), as we semi-demi-Slavophones can get or deserve! Just
> one word seemed misplaced, and I'm sure it's my own failing, not DN's. The
> adjective 'chipper' struck me as a tad anachronistic for 'cheerful/bright,'
> but perhaps American usage doesn't relate 'chipper' to the Brit RAF
> 'stiff-upper-lip' reaction to adversity? Or does VN's Russian have some 1920s
> colloquialism, i.e., other than the usual 'bodry'?
>
> Jansy: Are you making too much of the 'dangers' in translating the English
> noun string for 999 into the unavoidably 'denser' German equivalent,
> neunhundertneunundneunzig? To my Brit ears/eyes, CK's 'nine hundred
> ninety-nine lines' already provides a mild shock that may be missed by
> non-Brits. For no plausible historical reason, most Brits pronounce and
> 'picture' 999 as 'nine hundred AND ninety-nine!' The missing AND is what rowdy
> Brits (those who write angry letters to the TIMEs) call 'an Americanism: the
> unpardonable sin.' You can imagine that some Brit readers might pick up the
> possibly spurious signal that whoever CK may really be (or may think he is!),
> he is writing like a (Damned) Yankee. This particular signal may or may not be
> intended by VN -- suffice it to note that the master is uniquely versed in
> Anglo-American diversities, not to mention all those magically exploitable
> Anglo-Russian and Zemblo-American nuances.
>
> The relevance to Jansy's iconicity theme is that most American readers would
> simply not notice the missing AND, because this is how Americans usually
> 'spell out' 999. In fact, like the non-barking dog at night, is there really a
> missing AND to be missed! What's missing and sorely missed is that elusive
> 1000th line, putatively taken up by re-cycling Shade's epic. [In mathematical
> modulo terms, however, we still lack the line 0, since 0 and 1000 = 1000(mod
> 1000) but 1000 = 1(mod 999)]
>
> (Recall, in passing, the list's discussion of '1001 Nights' and how English,
> Persian and Arabic conventions vary allowing the dramatic 'One Thousand Nights
> and One Night?')
>
> I may be wrong, but I doubt if one can easily indicate in _standard_ German
> that 'nine hundred ninety-nine' IS an Americanism to many/most Brits. And,
> perhaps, it may be considered grotesquely irrelevant to even try. After all,
> there's no consensus that the American form for 999 carries any deep-textual
> significance in identifying CK's true nationality or mother tongue. IF a
> translator thinks otherwise, a footnote can gloss away ad lib. No German
> reader (one hopes) is going to ask "How come this CK is writing such fluent
> German, when all the extra-textual clues indicate that he's an American
> scholar, or at least posing as one?" (We meet the extreme case of
> nationality-bending in the movies, where the Germans speak to each other in
> English with heavy German accents!)
>
> Nor is it fair to see a reprehensible fat worm-like shape in
> neunhundertneunundneunzig. Those brought up with agglutinating languages (and
> German is relatively mild in this respect) consider such amalgamations as
> perfectly normal, readable, and, indeed eminently sensible and green
> (saved-spaces equal conserved-energy equals saved rainforests in Jansy's
> Brasil!)
>
> The German, interestingly, says 'nine hundred nine and ninety' with the
> conjunction in a different place from the Brit's. What is remarkable, and
> gives the German a special shape, is the accidental recurrence of the letters
> u-n and u-n-d: neunhundertneunundneunzig.
>
> In a parallel universe, VN settled in Berlin, wrote Fahles Feuer in German, &
> triggered a whole set of different problems for English translators.
>
> Finally: the NABOKOV-L-archives have many comments on the mirror-image (or
> inversion) of 999, viz the numerologist's gematric obsessive 666, and whether
> this influenced VN's choice of lines, knowing that VN would be skeptical of
> the mad-crank excesses stirred by the Book of Revelation. Without re-opening
> this can of worms, let us just note that 666 is usually pronounced six-six-six
> rather than 'six-hundred-[and]-sixty-six' (or ' ... three-score and six' as
> the KJV has it) so we usually avoid CK's 999 Americanism. There are so many
> hilarious confusions as to how Greek and Hebrew letters are mapped to
> numbers*. Indeed, given any NAME, my friend Underwood (Woody) Dudley can
> produce a convincing rule converting that name to 666. (See his "Numerology:
> Or, What Pythagoras Wrought" -- Spectrum Paperback) One deflating fact is
> that the earliest NT papyrus ms gives the 'number of the beast' as 615! Woody
> can adjust his mappings to suit.
>
> * http://www.justgivemethetruth.com/tarsus_is_666.htm
> http://www.religioustolerance.org/666a.htm
>
> Genug for g-now.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle.
> curmudgeon@acmqueue.com
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> Dear List,
>
> From today's random find in the Archives, with Donald Barton Johnson's
> abstract of "Signs & Symbols":Nabokov & Iconicity [ NABOKOV SYMPOSIUM (July
> 15-19, 2002) Saint Petersburg ], I learned that "Iconicity is.... the use of
> a letter's physical shape to carry meaning: words mean; letters (sometimes)
> illustrate or mimic topic and/or theme [...] We shall see that Nabokov, the
> consummate artist, employs these almost subliminal signs and symbols and
> integrates them into the architecture of his art."
> I decided to use this opportunity to bring up something that has recently
> struck me in relation to "iconicity".
> It concerns how words may dangerously and inevitably change shape by
> translation.
> In the German edition of "Pale Fire",Fahles Feuer, there is a surprising
> visual outcome of CK's very first sentence dealing with Shade's poem of nine
> hundred ninety-nine lines.
> We see: "ein Gedicht von neunhundertneunundneunzig Zeilen".
> What a fat worm of a number and it needs no echo of "nine/lines" to make its
> presence felt.
>
> ( Sandy Klein's posting on "how the lead organization lobbying on behalf of
> special privileges for Mexicans in the U.S.A. manages to get away with calling
> itself ³National Council of La Raza.² ...and Russian Noses ("There you have
> it: Russia is the nasal nation.") was a delightful find. Just for the fun of
> it ( but the initial issue is far from amusing) I'll add a palindrome which
> even serves as a criticism for "raza". I think was authored by Julio Cortazar
> while playing with his own name:
> "Adan y raza; azar y nada".)
> ---
> Jansy: Agreed! Add 'iconicity' to the long list of things that can be 'lost in
> translation,' however hard we try!
>
> It's also clear that "iconicity" can "take shape" and "change shape" by
> authorial choices _within_ his/her original language/idiom. The poor
> translator (doomed, unrecognized, and underpaid!) faces the extra challenge of
> deciding which "shapes" (iconic resonances?) are really intended by the
> author, and which may be happy accidents or simply fanciful constructions by
> the reader. Here, I take 'translator' to be a very special kind of 're-re- ...
> re-reader' fully immersed not only in all the quirks and twists of the source
> and target languages, but deeply in tune with the author's 'bag of tricks.'
>
> E.g., Dmitri's wonderful New Yorker translation of Natasha is surely as close
> to his father's 1924 Russian in mood, rhythm, pathos, location, and dilligent
> 'realism' (ma non tropo), as we semi-demi-Slavophones can get or deserve! Just
> one word seemed misplaced, and I'm sure it's my own failing, not DN's. The
> adjective 'chipper' struck me as a tad anachronistic for 'cheerful/bright,'
> but perhaps American usage doesn't relate 'chipper' to the Brit RAF
> 'stiff-upper-lip' reaction to adversity? Or does VN's Russian have some 1920s
> colloquialism, i.e., other than the usual 'bodry'?
>
> Jansy: Are you making too much of the 'dangers' in translating the English
> noun string for 999 into the unavoidably 'denser' German equivalent,
> neunhundertneunundneunzig? To my Brit ears/eyes, CK's 'nine hundred
> ninety-nine lines' already provides a mild shock that may be missed by
> non-Brits. For no plausible historical reason, most Brits pronounce and
> 'picture' 999 as 'nine hundred AND ninety-nine!' The missing AND is what rowdy
> Brits (those who write angry letters to the TIMEs) call 'an Americanism: the
> unpardonable sin.' You can imagine that some Brit readers might pick up the
> possibly spurious signal that whoever CK may really be (or may think he is!),
> he is writing like a (Damned) Yankee. This particular signal may or may not be
> intended by VN -- suffice it to note that the master is uniquely versed in
> Anglo-American diversities, not to mention all those magically exploitable
> Anglo-Russian and Zemblo-American nuances.
>
> The relevance to Jansy's iconicity theme is that most American readers would
> simply not notice the missing AND, because this is how Americans usually
> 'spell out' 999. In fact, like the non-barking dog at night, is there really a
> missing AND to be missed! What's missing and sorely missed is that elusive
> 1000th line, putatively taken up by re-cycling Shade's epic. [In mathematical
> modulo terms, however, we still lack the line 0, since 0 and 1000 = 1000(mod
> 1000) but 1000 = 1(mod 999)]
>
> (Recall, in passing, the list's discussion of '1001 Nights' and how English,
> Persian and Arabic conventions vary allowing the dramatic 'One Thousand Nights
> and One Night?')
>
> I may be wrong, but I doubt if one can easily indicate in _standard_ German
> that 'nine hundred ninety-nine' IS an Americanism to many/most Brits. And,
> perhaps, it may be considered grotesquely irrelevant to even try. After all,
> there's no consensus that the American form for 999 carries any deep-textual
> significance in identifying CK's true nationality or mother tongue. IF a
> translator thinks otherwise, a footnote can gloss away ad lib. No German
> reader (one hopes) is going to ask "How come this CK is writing such fluent
> German, when all the extra-textual clues indicate that he's an American
> scholar, or at least posing as one?" (We meet the extreme case of
> nationality-bending in the movies, where the Germans speak to each other in
> English with heavy German accents!)
>
> Nor is it fair to see a reprehensible fat worm-like shape in
> neunhundertneunundneunzig. Those brought up with agglutinating languages (and
> German is relatively mild in this respect) consider such amalgamations as
> perfectly normal, readable, and, indeed eminently sensible and green
> (saved-spaces equal conserved-energy equals saved rainforests in Jansy's
> Brasil!)
>
> The German, interestingly, says 'nine hundred nine and ninety' with the
> conjunction in a different place from the Brit's. What is remarkable, and
> gives the German a special shape, is the accidental recurrence of the letters
> u-n and u-n-d: neunhundertneunundneunzig.
>
> In a parallel universe, VN settled in Berlin, wrote Fahles Feuer in German, &
> triggered a whole set of different problems for English translators.
>
> Finally: the NABOKOV-L-archives have many comments on the mirror-image (or
> inversion) of 999, viz the numerologist's gematric obsessive 666, and whether
> this influenced VN's choice of lines, knowing that VN would be skeptical of
> the mad-crank excesses stirred by the Book of Revelation. Without re-opening
> this can of worms, let us just note that 666 is usually pronounced six-six-six
> rather than 'six-hundred-[and]-sixty-six' (or ' ... three-score and six' as
> the KJV has it) so we usually avoid CK's 999 Americanism. There are so many
> hilarious confusions as to how Greek and Hebrew letters are mapped to
> numbers*. Indeed, given any NAME, my friend Underwood (Woody) Dudley can
> produce a convincing rule converting that name to 666. (See his "Numerology:
> Or, What Pythagoras Wrought" -- Spectrum Paperback) One deflating fact is
> that the earliest NT papyrus ms gives the 'number of the beast' as 615! Woody
> can adjust his mappings to suit.
>
> * http://www.justgivemethetruth.com/tarsus_is_666.htm
> http://www.religioustolerance.org/666a.htm
>
> Genug for g-now.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle.
> curmudgeon@acmqueue.com
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
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Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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