Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019336, Thu, 4 Feb 2010 23:23:44 +0300

Subject
sharADA
Date
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Forgot to mention that shar means "sea strait" in North Russia. Cf., for instance, Matochkin shar, the narrow strait that separates the two islands of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago from each other. On the other hand, "the ha-ha of a doubled ocean" (1.3) is how Van humorously calls the Bering Strait separating (on Terra) Russia and America. One remembers the mad geographer in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf who went mad when he didn't find the Bering Strait on the globe. It was forgotten because of golovotyapstvo (bungling) of the Kniga i polyus ("Book and the Pole") publishers. In his The History of One City, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin mentions golovotyapy (bunglers), the mysterious people living in the North... Golovotyap ("bungler") comes from golova ("head") and tyapat' ("to hit," "to chop").

In my previous post, "immodest" was a slip of mental finger. It should be "frivolous:" It is surprising that a writer as grave as Mlle Lariviere should adopt the rather frivolous pen-name Monparnasse. Or perhaps you can suggest a better epithet? My English vocabulary isn't very rich.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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