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Dark Walter & Red Veen
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Speaking of Demon Veen (Dark Walter) and his cousin Daniel (Durak Walter or Red Veen), I mentioned in my previous posts Gorky's Vas'ka krasnyi (Red Vaska) and Vasiliy Tyomnyi (Dark Vasily), the Grand Prince of Moscow (1415-62) who was blinded by his cousin Dimitry Shemyaka. Shemyaka had a younger brother, Dimitry Krasnyi (who probably wasn't red-haired but must have had good looks, krasnyi meaning in the old days both "red" and "beautiful"). Daniel Veen dies an odd Boschean death (2.10). The death of Dimitry Krasnyi (as described by Karamzin) was also odd enough. He lost sense of smell, hearing and his nostrils had to be plugged, because his nose was bleeding incessantly. Having received the last Communion, he fell asleep but everybody thought he was dead. The boyars covered his body with silk or some other fabric and had a funeral feast, drinking a lot of mead until they all fell asleep in the same room. But in the night they were shocked to hear the dead man sing church hymns and talk about religious subjects. He kept singing and talking three days and only then died.
Passing to the next, 16th, century: according to a legend, Ivan the Terrible had the architect/architects of St. Basil's Cathedral (Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo) in the Red/Beautiful Square blinded not to let him/them build anything as beautiful.
Barma = ambar = ambra = Abram = rabam
Barma - the architect/one of the architects of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow; barma, sing. of barmy (small shoulder mantles worn by Moscow princes)
ambar - Russ., barn; cf. Night of the Burning Barn in Ada (1.19); in the closing poem of Tristia Mandelshtam compares Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome to barns full of air and light (Sobory vechnye Sofii i Petra, / Ambary vozdukha i sveta)
ambra - ambergris; note that "amber" (fossil resin, Fr. ambre, Germ. Bernstein, Russ. yantar'; cf. unmentionable 'lammer' banned on Antiterra after the L disaster: 1.3) comes from anbar, Arabic for "ambergis"; in Russian, anbar is an obsolete and dialectal form of ambar; anbar = baran (ram, sheep) = barin (master) + a - i; barin = brain = Brian (Russian spelling of Briand, the French statesman mentioned in The Golden Calf: Brian - eto golova; "B. has a good head indeed")
Abram - a male given name; an earlier name of Abraham
rabam - to the slaves (Dat. pl. of rab, "slave")
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Passing to the next, 16th, century: according to a legend, Ivan the Terrible had the architect/architects of St. Basil's Cathedral (Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo) in the Red/Beautiful Square blinded not to let him/them build anything as beautiful.
Barma = ambar = ambra = Abram = rabam
Barma - the architect/one of the architects of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow; barma, sing. of barmy (small shoulder mantles worn by Moscow princes)
ambar - Russ., barn; cf. Night of the Burning Barn in Ada (1.19); in the closing poem of Tristia Mandelshtam compares Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome to barns full of air and light (Sobory vechnye Sofii i Petra, / Ambary vozdukha i sveta)
ambra - ambergris; note that "amber" (fossil resin, Fr. ambre, Germ. Bernstein, Russ. yantar'; cf. unmentionable 'lammer' banned on Antiterra after the L disaster: 1.3) comes from anbar, Arabic for "ambergis"; in Russian, anbar is an obsolete and dialectal form of ambar; anbar = baran (ram, sheep) = barin (master) + a - i; barin = brain = Brian (Russian spelling of Briand, the French statesman mentioned in The Golden Calf: Brian - eto golova; "B. has a good head indeed")
Abram - a male given name; an earlier name of Abraham
rabam - to the slaves (Dat. pl. of rab, "slave")
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/