Alexey Sklyarenko: Sig
Leymanski, the name of a character in Van's novel Letters from Terra, is an
anagram of Kingsley Amis, "a waggish British novelist keenly interested in
physics fiction" (Vivian Darkbloom). On the other hand, sig is Russian for "lake
white-fish," Coregonus clupeaformis, of the salmon family, while Leymanski
suggests to a Russian ear "of lake Leman."
JM:
Great to learn that "Sig Leymanski" is an actual anagram of Kinglsey Amis.
Before your information I'd only
connected it to Sig(mund) Freud, although it didn't seem to make any
"literal" sense. Actually, this one link ( Amis and Freud) remains a puzzle
still, for the anagram Sig Leymanksi has been "partly derived by Van from that of Aqua’s last
doctor," that is a "Dr Froid... an
émigré brother with a passport-changed name of the Dr Froit of
Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu ..from Vienne, Isère." There is also a "Mondefroid bleakhouse
horsepittle" and "another agent or double of the
Isère Professor, a Dr Sig Heiler" (turned into "Fig" and other branching
bottoms).
There may be something else, this time related
to "Leyman/layman," and with certain German variants for
"Lehman"* (I seem to recall that Priscilla Meyer's article
on water-nymphs and RLSK mentions Lehman, but I don't
have it by me now).
............................................................................................................
*- In the Fall 2009 issue n.63 of "The
Nabokovian" there is a note by Savely Senderovich and Yelena Shvarts about
"Lehman's Diesease: A Comment on Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight." Sebastian's mother, they remarked, "dies from Lehmann's disease on
the shores of Lake Léman," to explore "what does it add to the meaning of the
text if Lake Léman is reflected in Lehmann's disease? For association for the
sake of association is hardly Nabokov's game."
(p.72)