Subject
Queries: Lo, KQK (fwd)
Date
Body
From: didier.machu@univ-pau.fr
Reading Nabokov, I occasionally come upon rather unobtrusive puns (together
with more obvious ones). Having no Russian I would be curious to know
whether similar puns are encountered in the corresponding passages of the
Russian version. Here are two examples of the kind of play on words I have
in mind (they are drawn from Lolita, which VN translated and Phaedra
published in Russian in 1967).
Chapter 29 (The Annotated Lolita, p. 130): Humbert's pills have induced "a
fastness of sleep" in the girl.The meaning seems obvious: Lo has fallen
into a fast sleep, she is now fast asleep, i.e. sound asleep. But it soon
appears that Lo (that "fast article") has gone asleep quite fast (i.e. in
no time) but is not in any deep sleep. One is not surprised to find the
same pun in the White Knight episode of Through the Looking-Glass. "But
that's a different kind of fastness," objects Alice.
Chapter 17 (p. 73): are Humbert's "visions of venery" the visions of an
enchanted hunter ("venery" then meaning: stylised hunting, or game animals)
or those of a lover ("venery" then meaning: love, or intercourse)? Both of
course, I suppose. Beauty and the Beast.
(In a similar manner, "paleopedology", mentioned in Ch. 2, may be derived
either from a root meaning "soil", or from a different one meaning
"child").
My thanks to Russian-speaking readers willing to oblige me by looking up
these two details!
P.S.1 I have another query. I cannot remember who painted the all too
well-known picture ("September Morn") alluded to in Chapter 3 of King,
Queen, Knave. Could anyone refresh my memory?
P.S.2 AMERLOCKS is an English rendering of AMERLOQUES, a derogatory
designation of Americans in French-rather lower-middle-class and now
slightly old-fashioned.
Reading Nabokov, I occasionally come upon rather unobtrusive puns (together
with more obvious ones). Having no Russian I would be curious to know
whether similar puns are encountered in the corresponding passages of the
Russian version. Here are two examples of the kind of play on words I have
in mind (they are drawn from Lolita, which VN translated and Phaedra
published in Russian in 1967).
Chapter 29 (The Annotated Lolita, p. 130): Humbert's pills have induced "a
fastness of sleep" in the girl.The meaning seems obvious: Lo has fallen
into a fast sleep, she is now fast asleep, i.e. sound asleep. But it soon
appears that Lo (that "fast article") has gone asleep quite fast (i.e. in
no time) but is not in any deep sleep. One is not surprised to find the
same pun in the White Knight episode of Through the Looking-Glass. "But
that's a different kind of fastness," objects Alice.
Chapter 17 (p. 73): are Humbert's "visions of venery" the visions of an
enchanted hunter ("venery" then meaning: stylised hunting, or game animals)
or those of a lover ("venery" then meaning: love, or intercourse)? Both of
course, I suppose. Beauty and the Beast.
(In a similar manner, "paleopedology", mentioned in Ch. 2, may be derived
either from a root meaning "soil", or from a different one meaning
"child").
My thanks to Russian-speaking readers willing to oblige me by looking up
these two details!
P.S.1 I have another query. I cannot remember who painted the all too
well-known picture ("September Morn") alluded to in Chapter 3 of King,
Queen, Knave. Could anyone refresh my memory?
P.S.2 AMERLOCKS is an English rendering of AMERLOQUES, a derogatory
designation of Americans in French-rather lower-middle-class and now
slightly old-fashioned.