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 Olénine" 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