As I pointed out earlier, Ruinen (the home
town of David van Veen's nephew) is an anagram of Un rien (as Heinrich
Heine's French friends mispronounced his name).
On the other hand, "Ruinen" may hint at
Rouen, Flaubert's home city. Flaubert was known for his love of brothels.
He was a literary guardian of Maupassant (the author of Maison Tellier,
Boule de suif, et al.). One of Flaubert's best friends was Turgenev
(who recommended Maupassant to Tolstoy, who then translated Maupassant's story
Le port into Russian* and wrote an introduction to the Russian
edition of Maupassant's ouevre).
"All the hundred
floramors [Villa Venus] opened simultaneously on
September** 20, 1875" (2.3). On Terra, Turgenev moved on this very day
to the new-built chalet at his and Viardot's villa Les frênes
("The Ash Trees") in Bougival (see Turgenev's letter of 7/19 September,
1875,
to N. V. Khanykov). Bougival, a village near
Paris, is the setting of Dumas-fils's La dame aux camélias and Maupassant's novella
Yvette.
Rouen + Rhine + word = Ruinen + whore
+ rod [odr]
Rhine (Der Rhein)
- the river (mentioned in Heine's Der Apollogott) that
flows in Duesseldorf, Heine's home city
rod - Russ., family,
kin; birth, origin
odr - Russ. obs.,
bed
*changing the title to "Франсуаза" and
adding one sentence: "Она твоя сестра" (She [the whore] is your
sister)
**As Van notes, the old Russian word for September, рюень,
echoes the name of the ecstatic Neverlander's home town. Probably irrelevant,
but рюень = ренью ("renew" as spelled in Russian)
Alexey Sklyarenko