Dear List,
Returning
once again to my non-Nabokovian question.
I
asked: " Does
anyone know why it was necessary to "translate the Greek verb by a
SINGLE English word" ( for the line "Lead us not into tempation") in
Our Lord's Prayer? The book that
discusses political influences on biblical translations I had in mind
is "The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution" by
Christopher Hill, 1993. Other authors that study similar matters are
Umberto Eco ( "In Search of a Perfect Language") and George Steiner (
"After Babel").
I'm returning to the issue because while I was
comparing the various prayers in different languages, I realized that I
had been misled by the internet commentator. He explained the
difficulty as arising from the "need to find a single English word." -
but there is something else that might be important to consider.
The prayer, as it is presented in Latin, was
used by the English, the Germans, the Italians and the French. They did
not follow the Greek.
I only found the version that alters the suggestion that "God might
be the tempter" to render it as "let us not fall into temptation" in
Catalán, Spanish and Portuguese.
So, the issue then was not about finding "a single word" but of
following the Latin or the Greek authority.
My doubt changed from an implied "swooner" in
the English translation and the realization of political motivations
interfering with translation. It may now be rendered more simply as:
"how was the Lord's prayer translated into Russian"?
Are there any hints that Nabokov was aware of
its different renderings, as he seemed to be interested in so many
other matters concerning Biblical texts?
In the same vein, I return to "Charles, the Beloved" left-handedness in
contrast to Shade's "ambidextrous" abilities ( which he describes in
the shaving scene during his bath and having his hands gesticulate in
the same automatic way as in the scene about Gradus and the signal code
) because the Lord's Prayer was brought by St. Matthews, who also
writes about "cutting off an offending right hand" - where the
insistence on following a virtuous path is equally authoritative when,
instead of having the sinner ask God's grace to steer away from
temptation and instead of admitting he may experience conflicting
emotions, he advises to " just "splitt off", "cut away" evil...". ( I
could never find again Joyce's rendering of this matter and be able to
complete the sentence of "Let the rite hand know what....")
I wonder if Nabokov might have been dealing with
this biblical injunction about evil and conflict when he described
mirror-like inversions, "neurological" difficulties (RLSK) or
left-hand/right-han scenes?
Jansy