Subject
Fwd: Re: Sun with 16 candles
From
Date
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Formerly the brightness of a lightbulb was given in "candles" (CP = Candle
Power). In the U.S., I believe it still is. There is no clear relation to
the unit used in Europe nowadays, "Watt", for Watt actually is a measure of
power and not one of brightness. (A 20W halogen lamp is brighter than a 20W
filament lamp.) However, for filament bulbs 1 Watt usually is considered
equaling .8 CP. So Khodassevich's sun should have had about 13 Watts.
Nabokov, it seems to me, brightened it up considerably, and the Danish
translator turned it into a sixteen-armed chandelier.
Dieter E. Zimmer, Berlin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 12:03 AM
Subject: Fwd: Query on VN's translation of Khodasevich
> Dear Don,
> I don't know if my attempt to send this query to the list was lost in the
> flurry of mails, or deleted because it was ignorant. If the reason was
> ignorance, please delete again.
>
> Dear List
> I need the help of someone familiar with Khodasevich's poetry - and of
> course, someone familiar with Nabokov's oeuvre.
> I am writing a review of a Danish book, a luxurious literary history of
> the Russian emigration - Mette Dalsgaard Den tunge lyre: Ruslands emigrant
> litteratur 1917-1985. En litteraturhistorisk fremstilling. København:
> Gyldendal, 2005.
> The book contains one of the finest, of the few, Danish portraits of
> Nabokov, though done in somewhat heavy strokes of the brush. But in the
> passage concerning Khodasevich, Dalsgaard has a footnote which raised my
> eyebrows. It concerns Khodasevich's poem Ballada, and runs as follows (in
> my hasty translation):
>
> "Vladimir Nabokov translated the poem into English. Peculiarly, however,
> he rendered "the sun with the sixteen candles" in the first stanza as "a
> 60 watt bulb". It is probably Nabokov's authority which caused this
> version to appear in diverse English anthologies, monographies, and
> literary histories" (89).
>
> Now, I am not skilled in transliteration and therefore I cannot render the
> line in Latin letters, but Khodasevich's poem appears both in Russian and
> English in David M. Bethea's Khodasevich: His Life and Art. (Princeton:
> Princeton UP, 1983) on pp. 238-240. There the English translation is done
> by Bethea who also translates the words from the last line of the first
> stanza as "a sixty-watt sun", and not, as Dalsgaard mis-quotes Nabokov's
> version, "a sixty-watt bulb".
>
> Dalsgaard's version of the opening verse is: "Jeg sidder i mit runde
> kammer/ Og ser fra min skrivebordsstol/ På himlens stukornamenter/ Og den
> sekstenarmede sol" (125). In English this, roughly, becomes: "I sit in my
> round chamber/ And look from my writing chair/ At heaven's stucco
> ornaments/ And the sixteen-armed sun". Clearly Dalsgaard perceives the
> Russian line as concerning a chandelier of some sort.
>
> What I wonder is:
> - Did both Nabokov and Bethea mistranslate Khodasevich? - I very
> much
> doubt that.
> - Does the "sixteen candles/lights" of the Russian text refer to a
> specific Russian light bulb or any such light source, of which Dalsgaard
> is in the dark? And if so: which?
>
> I do have a selection of Khodasevich's poetry (Moscow 1991) and Betehea's
> book at hand, but I have to admit that my Russian is very scant.
> I will welcome any comment.
> Best Wishes,
> Ole Nyegaard, Aarhus University, Denmark.
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
Power). In the U.S., I believe it still is. There is no clear relation to
the unit used in Europe nowadays, "Watt", for Watt actually is a measure of
power and not one of brightness. (A 20W halogen lamp is brighter than a 20W
filament lamp.) However, for filament bulbs 1 Watt usually is considered
equaling .8 CP. So Khodassevich's sun should have had about 13 Watts.
Nabokov, it seems to me, brightened it up considerably, and the Danish
translator turned it into a sixteen-armed chandelier.
Dieter E. Zimmer, Berlin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 12:03 AM
Subject: Fwd: Query on VN's translation of Khodasevich
> Dear Don,
> I don't know if my attempt to send this query to the list was lost in the
> flurry of mails, or deleted because it was ignorant. If the reason was
> ignorance, please delete again.
>
> Dear List
> I need the help of someone familiar with Khodasevich's poetry - and of
> course, someone familiar with Nabokov's oeuvre.
> I am writing a review of a Danish book, a luxurious literary history of
> the Russian emigration - Mette Dalsgaard Den tunge lyre: Ruslands emigrant
> litteratur 1917-1985. En litteraturhistorisk fremstilling. København:
> Gyldendal, 2005.
> The book contains one of the finest, of the few, Danish portraits of
> Nabokov, though done in somewhat heavy strokes of the brush. But in the
> passage concerning Khodasevich, Dalsgaard has a footnote which raised my
> eyebrows. It concerns Khodasevich's poem Ballada, and runs as follows (in
> my hasty translation):
>
> "Vladimir Nabokov translated the poem into English. Peculiarly, however,
> he rendered "the sun with the sixteen candles" in the first stanza as "a
> 60 watt bulb". It is probably Nabokov's authority which caused this
> version to appear in diverse English anthologies, monographies, and
> literary histories" (89).
>
> Now, I am not skilled in transliteration and therefore I cannot render the
> line in Latin letters, but Khodasevich's poem appears both in Russian and
> English in David M. Bethea's Khodasevich: His Life and Art. (Princeton:
> Princeton UP, 1983) on pp. 238-240. There the English translation is done
> by Bethea who also translates the words from the last line of the first
> stanza as "a sixty-watt sun", and not, as Dalsgaard mis-quotes Nabokov's
> version, "a sixty-watt bulb".
>
> Dalsgaard's version of the opening verse is: "Jeg sidder i mit runde
> kammer/ Og ser fra min skrivebordsstol/ På himlens stukornamenter/ Og den
> sekstenarmede sol" (125). In English this, roughly, becomes: "I sit in my
> round chamber/ And look from my writing chair/ At heaven's stucco
> ornaments/ And the sixteen-armed sun". Clearly Dalsgaard perceives the
> Russian line as concerning a chandelier of some sort.
>
> What I wonder is:
> - Did both Nabokov and Bethea mistranslate Khodasevich? - I very
> much
> doubt that.
> - Does the "sixteen candles/lights" of the Russian text refer to a
> specific Russian light bulb or any such light source, of which Dalsgaard
> is in the dark? And if so: which?
>
> I do have a selection of Khodasevich's poetry (Moscow 1991) and Betehea's
> book at hand, but I have to admit that my Russian is very scant.
> I will welcome any comment.
> Best Wishes,
> Ole Nyegaard, Aarhus University, Denmark.
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----