On Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on which Ada is
set) Pushkin's poem Bronze Horseman is known as Headless
Horseman (1.28; in our world, Headless Horseman is the title of a
novel by Captain Mayne Reid). Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I ("the
Bronze Horseman") is also mentioned in Khodasevich's poem Sorrentinskie
fotografii ("The Sorrento Snapshots"):
И отражен кастелламарской
Зеленоватою
волной,
Огромный страж России царской
Вниз опрокинут головой.
Так
отражался он Невой,
Зловещий, огненный и мрачный,
Таким явился предо мной
-
Ошибка пленки неудачной.
The "huge guard of the
imperial Russia" is reflected upside down (vniz oprokinut golovoy)
in the Castellamare greenish wave, as it was once reflected in the Neva
("the legendary river of Old Rus:" 2.1). Golovoy
(instrumental case of golova, head) rhymes with Nevoy
(instr. case of Neva). Btw., neva means in Finnish what
veen means in Dutch: "peat bog." Golova (the live head of the
knight who was beheaded by his brother, the evil dwarf Chernomor) is a
character in Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila.
In Chose Van Veen performs as Mascodagama walking on his
hands (1.30). His stunt frightens little children. Children often believe
that the antipodes (I mean "people who dwell in another hemisphere:
Southern/Northern") walk "upside down" (vniz golovoy). Vasco da Gama
discovered the sea route around the continent of Africa to India.
Parasha
+ d = sharada + p = sharp + Ada (Parasha - Eugene's bride in Pushkin's Bronze
Horseman; sharada - Russ., charade;
sharada = shar + Ada; shar - Russ., sphere, globe; sea
strait)
Alexey
Sklyarenko