Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0016524, Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:07:47 +0400

Subject
more anagrams
Date
Body
Dear all,

I continue to find new proofs of my anagram-involving theory. The Antiterran Pushkin used to exclaim Sladko! ("sweet") when bitten by mosquitoes in Yukon (not "Ykonsk," as I wrongly wrote in an earlier message): 1.17. The real Pushkin did the same in Priyutino, the Olenin estate near St. Petersburg, where in May-June of 1828 he was courting Anette Olenin (1808-88). The poet wanted to marry her and even proposed to her in the winter of 1828-29, but was rejected. Below, I quote a paragraph from VN's Commentary to his translation of Pushkin's Evgeniy Onegin (vol. 3, p. 206):
"Anagrams in French of "Anette Olenine" blossom here and there in the margins of our poet's manuscripts. One finds it written backward in the margins of the draft of Poltava (first half of October, 1828): ettenna eninelo; and the earnestness of his hopes is reflected in "Annette Pouchkine" jotted among the drafts of the first canto of Poltava, apparently on the very day that the repentant letter about the Gabriel poem was written to the tsar."
It is easy to notice that Lenin = Olenin - O. In 1840, three years after Pushkin's death, Anna Olenin married a Fyodor Andro (Andrault, a Frenchman in the Russian service). Andro = narod = Nord + A = Dorn + A = nard + A = nora + D = Arno + D = Roland - L = pardon - P (narod is Russian for "people;" Nord is Latin for "north;" cf. Elsie de Nord, a lady critic in Ada: 1.10; Dorn is German for "thorn" and a character in Chekhov's play "The Sea-gull;" nard is a plant mentioned in Pushkin's poem Vertograd moey sestry, "My sister's garden;" nora, accented on the second syllable, is Russian for "hole;" cf. Mandelstam's article on Blok Barsuch'ya nora, "A Badger's Hole," 1922; Arno is an Italian river that flows in Florence, Dante's home city; Roland is the hero of medieval songs about Karl the Great and his paladins).
Note that Yukon mentioned above is almost an anagram of konyukh ("groom"). As to "Yukonsk," consider this passage in Ada: "she [Lucette in her tight rubber cap] evoked the Helmeted Angel of the Yukonsk Ikon whose magic effect was said to change anemic blond maidens into konskie deti, freckled lads, children of a Sun Horse" (3.5). Hors is the ancient Slavic god of Sun, of horse, mentioned in "The Song of Igor's Campaign." But I would like to return to my previous post and point out one more anagram that I missed. El'tikov - El' = vitok = kitov = kivot. Kivot is an obsolete form of kiot, Russian for "icon-case." This word occurs in several works of Pushkin (for instance, in his story "The Coffin-maker," 1830) and in Lermontov's poem Vetka Palestiny ("The Bough of Palestine," 1837). According to Dal's dictionary, the Jews kept in a cedar-and-gold kivot, called Oron-ga-kodesh, tables of the law, and nowadays, in synagogues, they keep in kivots Moses' Pentateuch. I may return to these books of the Old Testament in a later installment.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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