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tempi passati: addendum
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tempi passati = pastime + pisatel' - el' = temptation + passion + b - bon ton
bon ton - Fr., good manners
Russian noun pisatel' (writer) comes from pisat' (to write). This verb happens to be a homograph of писать (to piss). But unlike писАть (to write), пИсать (to piss) is accented on the first syllable. If Percy used the neutral verb (nowadays it almost exclusively belongs to the nursery, alas), he would have said: nado popisat'. But he is drunk and uses a vulgar Slang word. Incidentally, the same word is used by Pushkin in the closing lines of his poem <To Anna N. Vulf> ("Uvy, naprasno deve gordoy..." 1825):
Она на щепочку нассыт,
Но и понюхать не позволит.
She will piss on a little chip,
But won't even let me smell it.
In his EO Commentary, VN mentions the fact that Pushkin has cynically debauched Anna Vulf during his stay in Mikhailovskoe (where he had been banished by the government) and says that AV's letters to the poet from Malinniki* (the Osipov-Vulf estate in the province of Tver) are heartrending to read.
As to the noun el' (fir tree; note possible connection to Ada's L disaster), it is among the words Tatiana looks up in Martin Zadeck in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Canto Five: XXIV: 5-9):
Татьяна в оглавленье кратком
Находит азбучным порядком
Слова: бор, буря, ведьма, ель,
Еж, мрак, мосток, медведь, метель
И прочая.
Tatiana in the brief index
looks up in alphabetic order
the words: forest, storm, raven, fir,
hedgehog, gloom, footbridge, bear, snowstorm,
et cetera.
I notice that in his translation of Pushkin's novel VN renders ведьма (witch) as "raven". Btw., both ведьма and медведь (bear) have ведь in them. This little word occurs in Ada (1.3): "Ved' ('it is, isn't it') sidesplitting to imagine that 'Russia,' instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty..." (see my previous post).
The purpose of my (or are they Nabokov's?) anagrams is to demonstrate how words can copulate giving birth to new words and their combinations (e.g., Pipa passes = papa pisses in PF). This copulation followed by instant delivery (pregnancy is skipped) takes place in one's brain and gives one tremendous intellectual pleasure. It is of a different order than sexual (anagrams can be erotic, though) pleasure and is perhaps not as poignant, but it can be greatly enhanced if one loves one's words and knows their past history. Like writing, playing anagrams is a pleasant pastime (cf. Ada and Grace Erminin playing anagrams at the picnic in Ardis the First: 1.13). I suspect that Ada is not only a triple, but also anagramatic dream (cf. "Ben Sirine, the expounder of anagrammatic dreams" mentioned in Ada: 2.2) and this only adds to the pleasure.
While we are here:
ворон [норов, Ровно] + еж = Воронеж = вор [ров] + он же [жено]
ворон - raven
норов - obs., temper; Norov - A. S. Norov, a writer (1795-1869), Pushkin's pal
Ровно - Rovno, a city in W Ukraine; it is renamed Knyazh'ye Veno in Korolenko's story "In a Bad Company" (1885)
еж** - hedgehog
Воронеж - Voronezh, city in Russia; the native city of Koltsov, Nikitin and Bunin; Mandelstam was banished to Voronezh in the 1930s
вор - thief; criminal
ров - ditch
он же - alias
жено - obs., woman
*The name comes from malina, raspberry. In his poem "We live not feeling the land beneath us..." Mandelshtam says that "each execution is a raspberry to him" (i. e. Stalin: что ни казнь у него то малина). Cf. in the performance with Marina's participation watched by Demon: "several young gardeners wearing for some reason the garb of Georgian tribesmen were popping raspberries into their mouths" (1.2).
**The standard spelling is ёж. But the letter ё (yo) is often ignored in books (where "e" stands for it) and is absent from most editions of EO.
Deadline June 31 (in Marie Bouchet's call for papers) is great!
Prairial 5, 2010
Alexey Sklyarenko
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bon ton - Fr., good manners
Russian noun pisatel' (writer) comes from pisat' (to write). This verb happens to be a homograph of писать (to piss). But unlike писАть (to write), пИсать (to piss) is accented on the first syllable. If Percy used the neutral verb (nowadays it almost exclusively belongs to the nursery, alas), he would have said: nado popisat'. But he is drunk and uses a vulgar Slang word. Incidentally, the same word is used by Pushkin in the closing lines of his poem <To Anna N. Vulf> ("Uvy, naprasno deve gordoy..." 1825):
Она на щепочку нассыт,
Но и понюхать не позволит.
She will piss on a little chip,
But won't even let me smell it.
In his EO Commentary, VN mentions the fact that Pushkin has cynically debauched Anna Vulf during his stay in Mikhailovskoe (where he had been banished by the government) and says that AV's letters to the poet from Malinniki* (the Osipov-Vulf estate in the province of Tver) are heartrending to read.
As to the noun el' (fir tree; note possible connection to Ada's L disaster), it is among the words Tatiana looks up in Martin Zadeck in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Canto Five: XXIV: 5-9):
Татьяна в оглавленье кратком
Находит азбучным порядком
Слова: бор, буря, ведьма, ель,
Еж, мрак, мосток, медведь, метель
И прочая.
Tatiana in the brief index
looks up in alphabetic order
the words: forest, storm, raven, fir,
hedgehog, gloom, footbridge, bear, snowstorm,
et cetera.
I notice that in his translation of Pushkin's novel VN renders ведьма (witch) as "raven". Btw., both ведьма and медведь (bear) have ведь in them. This little word occurs in Ada (1.3): "Ved' ('it is, isn't it') sidesplitting to imagine that 'Russia,' instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty..." (see my previous post).
The purpose of my (or are they Nabokov's?) anagrams is to demonstrate how words can copulate giving birth to new words and their combinations (e.g., Pipa passes = papa pisses in PF). This copulation followed by instant delivery (pregnancy is skipped) takes place in one's brain and gives one tremendous intellectual pleasure. It is of a different order than sexual (anagrams can be erotic, though) pleasure and is perhaps not as poignant, but it can be greatly enhanced if one loves one's words and knows their past history. Like writing, playing anagrams is a pleasant pastime (cf. Ada and Grace Erminin playing anagrams at the picnic in Ardis the First: 1.13). I suspect that Ada is not only a triple, but also anagramatic dream (cf. "Ben Sirine, the expounder of anagrammatic dreams" mentioned in Ada: 2.2) and this only adds to the pleasure.
While we are here:
ворон [норов, Ровно] + еж = Воронеж = вор [ров] + он же [жено]
ворон - raven
норов - obs., temper; Norov - A. S. Norov, a writer (1795-1869), Pushkin's pal
Ровно - Rovno, a city in W Ukraine; it is renamed Knyazh'ye Veno in Korolenko's story "In a Bad Company" (1885)
еж** - hedgehog
Воронеж - Voronezh, city in Russia; the native city of Koltsov, Nikitin and Bunin; Mandelstam was banished to Voronezh in the 1930s
вор - thief; criminal
ров - ditch
он же - alias
жено - obs., woman
*The name comes from malina, raspberry. In his poem "We live not feeling the land beneath us..." Mandelshtam says that "each execution is a raspberry to him" (i. e. Stalin: что ни казнь у него то малина). Cf. in the performance with Marina's participation watched by Demon: "several young gardeners wearing for some reason the garb of Georgian tribesmen were popping raspberries into their mouths" (1.2).
**The standard spelling is ёж. But the letter ё (yo) is often ignored in books (where "e" stands for it) and is absent from most editions of EO.
Deadline June 31 (in Marie Bouchet's call for papers) is great!
Prairial 5, 2010
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/