Subject
shar/sharovars
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Speaking of shar, it is also part of "sharovars" (wide trousers), the word that occurs in the same paragraph of Ada as 'ribbon boule:' "...several equally implausible servant girls in sharovars (somebody had goofed - the word 'samovars' may have got garbled in the agent's aerocable) were busy plucking marshmallows and peanuts from the branches of fruit trees" (1.2).
SHAROVARY - SHAR = SAMOVARY + R - SRAM ("shame," cf. Demon's words about the new kerosene distillery near Ardis: "styd i sram (shame) of our county:" 1.38)
Commenting on samovar, Boyd notes (in his "Annotations" in The Nabokovian): "the urn Russians use to boil water for tea, perhaps meant to be introduced for local color - it is a cliche of Russianness - despite its irrelevance to this scene, only for it to have been garbled into sharovary."
Actually, the word samovar occurs in Eugene Onegin:
'Twas growing dark; upon the table, shining,
There hissed the evening samovar,
warming the Chinese teapot (Chapter Three, XXXVII, 1-3).
Btw., in German Schar means "multitude," heap."
Alexey Sklyarenko
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SHAROVARY - SHAR = SAMOVARY + R - SRAM ("shame," cf. Demon's words about the new kerosene distillery near Ardis: "styd i sram (shame) of our county:" 1.38)
Commenting on samovar, Boyd notes (in his "Annotations" in The Nabokovian): "the urn Russians use to boil water for tea, perhaps meant to be introduced for local color - it is a cliche of Russianness - despite its irrelevance to this scene, only for it to have been garbled into sharovary."
Actually, the word samovar occurs in Eugene Onegin:
'Twas growing dark; upon the table, shining,
There hissed the evening samovar,
warming the Chinese teapot (Chapter Three, XXXVII, 1-3).
Btw., in German Schar means "multitude," heap."
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/