Friday, May 3, 2013

The "Seva Ascendes" bit that surely everyone sweared at

You are reading Lolita. You vow to the masterful writing, even as you cheerfully grimace at the necessity of researching some word every other page. The guy even seems to enjoy sending you on multiple destination voyages that somewhere end in dirty, dirty places and meanings.

And then you come to this bit:

"Seva ascendes, pulsata, brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa, clatterans, populus in corridoro. Hanc nisi mors mihi adimet nemo! Juncea puellula, jo pensavo fondissime, nobserva nihil quidquam"

And no amount of erudition can preclude a deluge of colorful expletives. Personally, I can more or less intuit about half of what is there. So I'll say it with all the respect and admiration in the world: Nabokov sucks.

So here (be advised, some of it is gibberish resembling a word in some or various languages):

"Sap ascends, pulsates, burning, itching, most insane. Elevator clattering, pausing, clattering, people in the corridor. No one but death would take this one from me! Slender little girl, I thought most fondly, observing nothing at all."
- (lifted, more or less, from Alfred Appel's annotated version)

Wonderful, exasperating book.

7 comments:

mintberry said...

Thanks!

Unknown said...

:)

Mika said...

Oh you lifesaver, thank you!

Anonymous said...

Oh thank you so much!

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, thank you! I'm fine with the French because it's my second language, but when I got to this part, I felt like my brain was broken. I tried translations from multiple languages but it still didn't make any sense.

Unknown said...

Why is it written this way tho? Genuinely asking.

Anonymous said...

Tautology.