Subject
Loins and "tricky metaphors and fairy-tale sublimations" in "The
Enchanter"
Enchanter"
From
Date
Body
C. Kunin enjoyed M.V.de Gato's sonorous translation of "loins" as "fogo dos meus flancos." There are still unfanthomed mysteries in connection to Portugal's Portuguese and the language we speak in Brazil. Here the meaning of "flanco" comes close to the word "flanks" [Middle English, from Old English flanc, from Old French flanc, of Germanic origin.] and its sexual reference is dimmed. For "The Enchanter," Jorio Dauster chose the word "entranhas" (entrails) instead of "carne" (flesh) and, in this case, it appears to me to be quite fitting. He wrote: "e o antegozo de encontrar a menina sozinha derreteu-se como cocaína em suas entranhas." "
The sexual imagery and euphemisms are abundant and, almost, gross in VN's novelette. His translator son explains one of those: " A potentially more cryptic passage is that of the "strange, nailless finger" scrawled on the fence (p.42,l.15). Here, again, deliberate ambiguity, concurrent images and ideas, and multiple levels of interpretation are at play. To spell this one out: The 'definite goal' that emerges from a substratum of the man's brain is access to the girl via marriage to the mother. The imagined graffito on the fence is a hybrid of the forefinger pointing the way on old-fashioned signs and of some joker's phallic doodle that the digit's stylized, nilless shape simultaneously suggests to a mind bent, basically, on depravity, but not devoid of self-reproaching flashes of objectivity. This ambiguous finger simultaneously indicates, in the fleeting image, the path of courtship (to the mother), the secret parts of the yearned-for girl, and the protagonist's own vulgarity that no amount of rationalization can explain away." O, my. That's what the signaling nailless finger signifies to "a mind bent on depravity"(the protagonist's, of course). In the novelette we find the character's so-named "magic wand" (his enchanter's penis with its spell),on p.91. There are the imagetic substitutions related to sex: "the captive would be ignorant of the temporarily noxious nexus between the puppet in her hands and his puppet-master's panting, between the plum in her mouth and the rapture of the distant tree.."(p.73) and storybook images "the pet giant, the fairy-tale forest, the sack with its treasure" (p.72). Perhaps "loins" as "entrails" would be OK in relation to the melting cocaine sensations spreading all over the body (who knows)...
In his postface Dmitri N. wrote: " I shall leave to the studious - among whom exist some superbly sensitive readers of Nabokov - the detailed identification and the documentation of themes and levels (straight narrative, tricky metaphor, romantic poetry, sexuality, fairy-tale sublimations, mathematics, consciente, compassion, fear of being srung up by the heels), as well as the search for hidden parallels with 'The Song of Igor's Campaign' or 'Moby Dick'..." (p.120).Good. There's some space left for all sorts of "studious" readers. I wonder what are VN's "tricky metaphors" in "The Enchanter". Surely the primitive sexual imagery belongs to the part related to what DN distinguished under "sexuality, fairy-tale sublimations" (whatever).
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The sexual imagery and euphemisms are abundant and, almost, gross in VN's novelette. His translator son explains one of those: " A potentially more cryptic passage is that of the "strange, nailless finger" scrawled on the fence (p.42,l.15). Here, again, deliberate ambiguity, concurrent images and ideas, and multiple levels of interpretation are at play. To spell this one out: The 'definite goal' that emerges from a substratum of the man's brain is access to the girl via marriage to the mother. The imagined graffito on the fence is a hybrid of the forefinger pointing the way on old-fashioned signs and of some joker's phallic doodle that the digit's stylized, nilless shape simultaneously suggests to a mind bent, basically, on depravity, but not devoid of self-reproaching flashes of objectivity. This ambiguous finger simultaneously indicates, in the fleeting image, the path of courtship (to the mother), the secret parts of the yearned-for girl, and the protagonist's own vulgarity that no amount of rationalization can explain away." O, my. That's what the signaling nailless finger signifies to "a mind bent on depravity"(the protagonist's, of course). In the novelette we find the character's so-named "magic wand" (his enchanter's penis with its spell),on p.91. There are the imagetic substitutions related to sex: "the captive would be ignorant of the temporarily noxious nexus between the puppet in her hands and his puppet-master's panting, between the plum in her mouth and the rapture of the distant tree.."(p.73) and storybook images "the pet giant, the fairy-tale forest, the sack with its treasure" (p.72). Perhaps "loins" as "entrails" would be OK in relation to the melting cocaine sensations spreading all over the body (who knows)...
In his postface Dmitri N. wrote: " I shall leave to the studious - among whom exist some superbly sensitive readers of Nabokov - the detailed identification and the documentation of themes and levels (straight narrative, tricky metaphor, romantic poetry, sexuality, fairy-tale sublimations, mathematics, consciente, compassion, fear of being srung up by the heels), as well as the search for hidden parallels with 'The Song of Igor's Campaign' or 'Moby Dick'..." (p.120).Good. There's some space left for all sorts of "studious" readers. I wonder what are VN's "tricky metaphors" in "The Enchanter". Surely the primitive sexual imagery belongs to the part related to what DN distinguished under "sexuality, fairy-tale sublimations" (whatever).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
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/