Alexey Sklyarenko wrote on "leggy" in the Russian original of "Perfection" and added "you can see in my English how deeply engrossed in my article I am" but I hope he will answer one more question.
(btw, in one of VN's short-stories he describes a profile that opens like a nutcracker  - and this suggests he is familiar with the toothy and vertically-crushing nutcracker, not only with the leggy thing)
 
I came across the word "sunbow" in the short-story "Recruiting" (Nabor). Initially I thought it was a neologism with the sun replacing the rain. In the translation to Portuguese it was indeed rendered simply as "rainbow". And yet, it is not a neologism in English, my Concise Oxford Dictionary describes the "sunbow" as an effect, like a rainbow, that results from the sun shining on a spray of water.
Quite a surprise to realize that in English these light effects have special terms to designate them. How is it in Russian? Is it a neologism in  the original?
 
A sunbow spanning the inward soul of a recruiting narrator then looking for an imaginary company to share in his bliss...What a delightful sentence...
 
I also began to wonder how the name Vladimir could be translated into other languages, such as we find in "Raymond"or "Sigmund".Some translations are very peculiar ( William, Guillaume; Jacques,Jacob, Tiago) 
 
Jansy
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Alexey Sklyarenko
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] EVENT and a long lost reference

In this same short-story I found VN used the word "leggy", which also came up in the list in relation to Pnin's "leggy thing". Here it comes, on page 335: "During those first warm days everything seemed beautiful and touching: the leggy little girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, the old men on the benches, the green confettti...every time the air stretched its invisible limbs."
 
The corresponding phrase in Sovershenstvo, the Russian original of "Perfection", is golenastye devochki. On the second thought, I might have translated "leggy thing" in Pnin as golenastyi, or even golenasten'kiy, predmet. It all depends on the context at which I don't have the time to look closer. You can see in my English how deeply engrossed in my article I am.
 
Alexey 

Search the Nabokv-L archive with Google

Contact the Editors

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Visit Zembla

View Nabokv-L Policies

Search the Nabokv-L archive with Google

Contact the Editors

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Visit Zembla

View Nabokv-L Policies