While reading the programme of an entrancing
performance, Dreyer comments on 'the Gutter-Perchers, who
ever they are, and then a world-famous conjuror.' ( 820) The word
"gutta-percha" ( a kind of resilient cautchuck,used as insulator and for dental
fillings) appears again, now with the correct spelling, on page 883, when Dreyer
and the Inventor are relieved to discover that a rival automannequin is not made
of voskin, but is covered by that artificial rubber.
Beside the play with "percha/perch" ( VN's characters often "perch", like
birds), we may learn from "Dar" ( The Gift, CCC's
page 340), from a discussion about synesthaesia and Rimbaud's "audition colorée":
"If I had some paints handy I
would mix burnt-sienna and sepia for you so as to match the colour of a
gutta-percha "ch" sound..."
One of our generous EDs, SB, helped me off-list with feathering and
swallows. He wrote:
"Looks like "feathering" was an
inspiration of translation? Or, perhaps more likely, the "lastochka" comes in
because VN wanted to convey the attractive English metaphor "feathering",
which he knew from rowing at Cambridge, and couldn't get at it with a
literal translation (into Russian, that is)."
I have no idea
if "lastochkas" are "perchers", but I think that readers that don't
speak Russian might miss a lot of associative onomatopoeias in
which the Russian language is lurking in the background - if
these burnt-sienna sepia colored "ch" have a similar sound as in
"lastochka","perch" or "gutta-percha".
L'irondelle ( a lastochka?) is associated to Sybil Shade in Pale Fire,
and she is one of the perchers...
What the Russian for "waxwing"?