Subject
Veen-Golovin-Karenin-Onegin
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Date
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Like Golovin (Ivan Ilyich's surname in Tolstoy's story), Karenin (Anna Arkadievna's and her husband's surname in Tolstoy's novel) comes from "head". Karenon (the word Tolstoy discovered in Homer) means in Greek what golova means in Russian: "head".*
The name Van Veen, of Ada's protagonist, looks like the curtailed, or "beheaded", name Ivan Golovin. The little tail vin (all that remains of Golovin after beheading) means "he" in Ukrainian. The Russian word for "he" is on.
While karenon ends in -on, the name Onegin begins with it. There are many on's ("he's") in Eugene Onegin. For the first time it occurs in the novel's third line:
On uvazhat' sebya zastavil
He [Onegin's uncle] has made one respect him [in other words, has died].
In her letter to Onegin (Chapter Three) Tatiana once refers to him in the third person:
Ty chut' voshyol, ya vmig uznala,
vsya obomlela, zapylala
i v myslyakh molvila: vot on!
Scarce had you entered, instantly I knew you,
I felt all faint, I felt aflame,
and in my thoughts I uttered: It is he!
In his long poem Khorosho ("Good", 1927) Mayakovsky parodies Tatiana's dialogue with her nurse in Chapter Three of EO and also uses the pronoun on:
A kak poyot on pro svobodu...
Ya s nim khochu, - Ne s nim, tak v vodu!
And how he [A. F. Kerenski] sings of freedom...
I want with him. If not with him, then [I'll plunge] into water!
If mysterious Khina Chlek** = Lilya Brik, then Lapis-Trubetskoy, a character in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs", a graphomaniac, is a satire on Mayakovski, Lilya Brik's lover. A newspaper editor calls Lapis, who once used the word domkrat*** in a wrong context, Lapsus. Lapis is Latin for "stone", while lapsus means "blunder". The name R. G. Stonelower, of the translator who rendered the title of Tolstoy's novel as Anna Arkadievich Karenina (1.1), seems to hint not only at George Steiner and Robert Lowell, but also at Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy.
*I point this out in "Vsyo khorosho, chto khorosho konchaetsya" (All's Well that Ends Well), a Russian article available online in Topos.
**Lapis's former mistress in Ilf and Petrov's novel. Khina Chlek = chlen (member) + Kikhada (Don Quixote's real name in Cervantes's novel; transliterated Russian spelling) - da (yes)
***jack. Domkrat + e = demokrat (democrat; while Lapis doesn't know what a domkrat is, the meaning of democrat is unknown to Mayakovski)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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The name Van Veen, of Ada's protagonist, looks like the curtailed, or "beheaded", name Ivan Golovin. The little tail vin (all that remains of Golovin after beheading) means "he" in Ukrainian. The Russian word for "he" is on.
While karenon ends in -on, the name Onegin begins with it. There are many on's ("he's") in Eugene Onegin. For the first time it occurs in the novel's third line:
On uvazhat' sebya zastavil
He [Onegin's uncle] has made one respect him [in other words, has died].
In her letter to Onegin (Chapter Three) Tatiana once refers to him in the third person:
Ty chut' voshyol, ya vmig uznala,
vsya obomlela, zapylala
i v myslyakh molvila: vot on!
Scarce had you entered, instantly I knew you,
I felt all faint, I felt aflame,
and in my thoughts I uttered: It is he!
In his long poem Khorosho ("Good", 1927) Mayakovsky parodies Tatiana's dialogue with her nurse in Chapter Three of EO and also uses the pronoun on:
A kak poyot on pro svobodu...
Ya s nim khochu, - Ne s nim, tak v vodu!
And how he [A. F. Kerenski] sings of freedom...
I want with him. If not with him, then [I'll plunge] into water!
If mysterious Khina Chlek** = Lilya Brik, then Lapis-Trubetskoy, a character in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs", a graphomaniac, is a satire on Mayakovski, Lilya Brik's lover. A newspaper editor calls Lapis, who once used the word domkrat*** in a wrong context, Lapsus. Lapis is Latin for "stone", while lapsus means "blunder". The name R. G. Stonelower, of the translator who rendered the title of Tolstoy's novel as Anna Arkadievich Karenina (1.1), seems to hint not only at George Steiner and Robert Lowell, but also at Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy.
*I point this out in "Vsyo khorosho, chto khorosho konchaetsya" (All's Well that Ends Well), a Russian article available online in Topos.
**Lapis's former mistress in Ilf and Petrov's novel. Khina Chlek = chlen (member) + Kikhada (Don Quixote's real name in Cervantes's novel; transliterated Russian spelling) - da (yes)
***jack. Domkrat + e = demokrat (democrat; while Lapis doesn't know what a domkrat is, the meaning of democrat is unknown to Mayakovski)
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/