Forgot to mention that shar means "sea
strait" in North Russia. Cf., for instance, Matochkin shar, the narrow
strait that separates the two islands of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago
from each other. On the other hand, "the ha-ha of a doubled ocean"
(1.3) is how Van humorously calls the Bering Strait separating (on Terra) Russia
and America. One remembers the mad geographer in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden
Calf who went mad when he didn't find the Bering Strait on the
globe. It was forgotten because of golovotyapstvo (bungling) of
the Kniga i polyus ("Book and the Pole") publishers. In his The
History of One City, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin mentions golovotyapy
(bunglers), the mysterious people living in the North...
Golovotyap ("bungler") comes from golova ("head") and
tyapat' ("to hit," "to chop").
In my previous post, "immodest" was a slip of
mental finger. It should be "frivolous:" It is surprising that a writer as grave as Mlle Larivière should
adopt the rather frivolous pen-name Monparnasse. Or perhaps
you can suggest a better epithet? My English vocabulary isn't very
rich.
Alexey
Sklyarenko