Victor Fet responded to DBJ's query on Vorona (crow), Korona (crown) ,Korova (cow) : "Yes, indeed, it is a well-known typing-error story, which existed well
before PF. It is told about various newspapers and various tsars; it was quoted e.g. by V. Pikul' in his "historical novel" "Nechistaya sila" with
reference to newspaper "Novoye vremya" from 1896 (Nicholas II coronation).Other sources assign it to 1883 and coronation of Alexander III.
Others even to Nicholas I. It seems to be a legend, however. At least the Russian researcher of typing errors' history Dmitri Sherikh
could not find any such newspaper in reality.

 

Jansy Mello:  Kinbote's wonder links this legend about the Russian misprints ( apparently an invented joke on "coronation") to the wonderful coincidence of its being rendered into English, with no alteration in its spirit.  Kinbote will return to this issue not under any heading about a "misprint" ( see below the sentences that bear the word or are referred to  "misprint")., but when he discusses Goethe's poem on the "Erlkönig" *.

 

 

1. Introduction:

Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys ...and has asked me to mention in my Preface...that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary. Insert before a professional. A professional proofreader has carefully rechecked the printed text of the poem against the photo type of the manuscript, and has found a few trivial misprints I had missed; that has been all in the way of outside assistance...

 

2. Poem:

                                           He took his article from a steel file:

                                   ⁸⁰⁰   "It’s accurate. I have not changed her style.

                                           There’s one misprint — not that it matters much:

                                           Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch."

                                                 

                                            Life Everlasting — based on a misprint!

                                            I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,

                                            And stop investigating my abyss?

 

3. Commentary:

(a)  Line 98: On Chapman’s Homer:   not a misprint

A reference to the title of Keats’ famous sonnet (often quoted in America) which, owing to a printer’s absent-mindedness, has been drolly transposed, from some other article, into the account of a sports event. For other vivid misprints see note to line 802.

 (b) Line 782: your poem

An image of Mont Blanc’s "blue-shaded buttresses and sun-creamed domes" is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud of that particular poem which I wish I could quote but do not have at hand. The "white mountain" of the lady’s dream, caused by a misprint to tally with Shade’s "white fountain," makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the lady’s grotesque pronunciation.

(c) Line 803: a misprint

Translators of Shade’s poem are bound to have trouble with the transformation, at one stroke, of "mountain" into "fountain": it cannot be rendered in French or German, or Russian, or Zemblan; so the translator will have to put it into one of those footnotes that are the rogue’s galleries of words. However! There exists to my knowledge one absolutely extraordinary, unbelievably elegant case, where not only two, but three words are involved. The story itself is trivial enough (and probably apocryphal). A newspaper account of a Russian tsar’s coronation had, instead of korona (crown), the misprint vorona (crow), and when next day this was apologetically "corrected," it got misprinted a second time as korova (cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-crow-cow series and the Russian korona-vorona-korova series is something that would have, I am sure, enraptured my poet. I have seen nothing like it on lexical playfields and the odds against the double coincidence defy computation.
(d) The actual note to which CK refers the reader, line 802: mountain

Where was I? Yes, trudging along again as in the old days with John, in the woods of Arcady, under a salmon sky...."Well," I said gaily, "what were you writing about last night, John? Your study window was simply blazing."..."Mountains," he answered. The Bera Range, an erection of veined stone and shaggy firs, rose before me in all its power and pride... and would I mind very much if we started to go home — though it was only around nine — so that he could plunge back into his chaos and drag out of it, with all its wet stars, his cosmos?...How could I say no? That mountain air had gone to my head: he was reassembling my Zembla!

 

* -  Line 662: Who rides so late in the night and the wind.: "This line, and indeed the whole passage (lines 653-664), allude to the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlking, hoary enchanter of the elf-haunted alderwood, who falls in love with the delicate little boy of a belated traveler. One cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade manages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad (a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse:

                                                                           ,            ,               ,                    ,

⁶⁶² Who rides so late in the night and the wind

⁶⁶³ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 ,              ,        ,              ,

⁶⁶⁴ . . . . It is the father with his child

Goethe’s two lines opening the poem come out most exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent-enfant), in my own language:                                                                                ,               ,           ,          ,

Ret woren ok spoz on natt ut vett?

  ,             ,                ,        ,

Eto est votchez ut mid ik dett.

 

Another fabulous ruler, the last king of Zembla, kept repeating these haunting lines to himself both in Zemblan and German, as a chance accompaniment of drumming fatigue and anxiety, while he climbed through the bracken belt of the dark mountains he had to traverse in his bid for freedom..


I would like to call our attention to the fact that Kinbote doesn't mention Goethe's original words in German, with its rhyme, like in French for "vent-enfant" and Zemblan ( "vett-dett" ) is: "Wind-Kind".  Why did Kinbote need to mention the French,instead of going directly to the German?  What was he indicating on the matter of Erlkönig, Alderking, Death and Boys? 

 
The theme is the same as the difficulty of finding translations with similar sounds as indicated for "mountain-fountain" ...( I posted something about this in the past, since in Portuguese we can translate "monte-fonte", perhaps in Italian or various romance languages,too. I also discussed the translator's problems with "korona,vorona,korova" index entries )