Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019479, Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:46:39 +0300

Subject
powder/red wop
Date
Body
In Russian, "powder" is порох. The explosive anagrams below are meant to amuse people. These little fireworks have nothing to do with Pale Fire:

ПЛОХО + ХОРОШО + В = ПОРОХ + ШОЛОХОВ (плохо means "bad," хорошо "good;" B is the Cyrillic counterpart of Latin V; Шолохов is M. A. Sholokhov, 1905-84, Soviet novelist, author of "And quiet flows the Don" etc.; VN mentions cardboard Don cossacks on their rocking horses of cardboard in his Post Scriptum to the Russian edition of Lolita)

Interestingly, ПЛОХО = ХОЛОП (serf; lackey) = ХЛОПОК ("clap, bang;" when accented on the first syllable, "cotton") - К; ПОРОХ + К = ПОРОК (vice; defect, flaw) + Х

In one of her poems, M. Tsvetaeva says that Гуттенбергов пресс ("Guttenberg's printing press") can be more perilous than Шварцев прах ("Berthold Schwarz's powder"). ПРАХ (usually, it means "dust, ashes") = ХРАП (snore)

Alexey Sklyarenko

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