On page 371 of Vèncer la por (Edicions 62), the Catalan edition of Gabriel Ferrater's memoirs by Jordi Amat, a letter was inserted that strengthens faith (of errata). The author describes Ferrater's peculiar meeting with Professor Vallcorba, father of the publisher Jaume Vallcorba. The source of the story is the memory of the son and Amat decides to highlight the subjectivity by saying that it is an implausible memory, but an errant r sneaks into the sentence and causes a triggering semantic change: “It is the Vallcorba record, porc plausible”. A lapse calami commented on in the publishing world that transforms the first edition into collector's material. Let no one jump to conclusions. There is no vaccine against this virus. Gómez de la Serna defined errata in a greguería as "microbes of unknown origin and irreparable bite" and some are so irreparable that they end up prospering.
The prestigious Mexican publishing house Fund for Economic Culture had to be called the Fund for Ecumenical Culture. At least that is what Professor José Esteban assures in Vituperio (and some praise) of the errata (Renaissance, 2002). In his cristomatia of resounding misprints, Esteban also picks up a jumentud (for “youth”) that was passed on to Antonio Machado. It was worse for Voltaire, who transformed the former bishop of Mirepoix ( l’anc. evêque de Mirepoix ) into an ass by changing the c of the abbreviation for ancient ( anc: ancien ) to an e ( ane: ass ).
Another spectacular case is the irruption of an apparently silent ax in the first edition of the novel Mr. Witt in the canton (1935) by Ramón J. Sender, a touch of punk avant la lettre that transformed the classic greeting God save the Queen (God save the Queen) in a magnificent God shave the Queen (God shaves her). Not to mention the extraordinary “passó de putillas” (for “passed on tiptoe”) that Esteban finds in an ecclesiastical book!
The most historic errata are the biblical ones and among them the Anglican blasphemous comma in the King James Bible, when it describes the crucifixion (Luke 23:32). The text had to be “And there were also two other, malefactors” (and there were also two others, who were delinquents), but the disappearance of the comma increased the number of delinquents to three. I keep like gold on cloth a typewritten letter from the director of an office of the “Banco Español de Cerdito”. The only plausible thing is that everything is used from the pig.
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