From Russia and the Golovins back to Neverland
and the Veens. If I'm not mistaken, the Dutch pronounce the
word veen ("peat bog") rather like the Anglophones do "feign"
(a minor point, but perhaps worth noting; I'm indebted to A. Bouazza who
clarified it to me). A couple of anagrams with Veen, just
to "divert" folks:
VEEN = EVEN = NEVERLAND + O - RONALD = VENERA
+ ROD - ARDOR
VAN VEEN = NEVA + VENICE - ICE = VENENA +
V
DAVID VAN VEEN = DVE NA DIVANE + V = DEVA
NE DIVAN + V = NA DNE + AVID + VEVEY + E - EYE
Ronald is a male given name; cf. Ronald Oranger,
the publisher of Ada (5.4); Venera is the Russian name of
Venus; Venera = Erevan (the capital of Armenia); rod is
Russian for "family, kin, clan"
Neva is "the legendary river of Old Rus"
(2.1); venena is Latin for "poison" (cf. the line from Blok's
poem about a Jewish chemist: "And before the cabinet inscribed
venena")
David van Veen is a wealthy architect of
Flemish extraction, a grandfather of Eric Veen (2.3); dve na divane means "two [girls] on the divan,"
deva ne divan, "a girl is not a divan," in Russian; btw.,
divan = Dvina (Western Dvina and Northern Dvina, two
rivers in Russia); Na dne ("At the Bottom," 1902) is a famous play by
Gorky; Vevey is a town on the north shore of Lake Geneva between Lausanne
and Montreux; in Russian, it is pronounced exactly like "V. V.," the acronym
VN's name-and-patronymic
Alexey Sklyarenko