Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021777, Sun, 3 Jul 2011 13:26:59 +0300

Subject
Headless Horseman
Date
Body
On Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) Pushkin's poem Bronze Horseman is known as Headless Horseman (1.28; in our world, Headless Horseman is the title of a novel by Captain Mayne Reid). Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I ("the Bronze Horseman") is also mentioned in Khodasevich's poem Sorrentinskie fotografii ("The Sorrento Snapshots"):

И отражен кастелламарской
Зеленоватою волной,
Огромный страж России царской
Вниз опрокинут головой.
Так отражался он Невой,
Зловещий, огненный и мрачный,
Таким явился предо мной -
Ошибка пленки неудачной.

The "huge guard of the imperial Russia" is reflected upside down (vniz oprokinut golovoy) in the Castellamare greenish wave, as it was once reflected in the Neva ("the legendary river of Old Rus:" 2.1). Golovoy (instrumental case of golova, head) rhymes with Nevoy (instr. case of Neva). Btw., neva means in Finnish what veen means in Dutch: "peat bog." Golova (the live head of the knight who was beheaded by his brother, the evil dwarf Chernomor) is a character in Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila.
In Chose Van Veen performs as Mascodagama walking on his hands (1.30). His stunt frightens little children. Children often believe that the antipodes (I mean "people who dwell in another hemisphere: Southern/Northern") walk "upside down" (vniz golovoy). Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route around the continent of Africa to India.

Parasha + d = sharada + p = sharp + Ada (Parasha - Eugene's bride in Pushkin's Bronze Horseman; sharada - Russ., charade; sharada = shar + Ada; shar - Russ., sphere, globe; sea strait)

Alexey Sklyarenko

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